


Coming Home, Finding Home

by luoup (ravenic)



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, JNPR Deserved Better, JNPR in the aftermath of pyrrha's death and volume 3 in general, Mentioned Character Death, Post-Volume 3 (RWBY), Recovery, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, this is just me babbling about jnr and the time between vol 3 and vol 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-23 21:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8343694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenic/pseuds/luoup
Summary: Beacon is gone.  Pyrrha is gone.  The world is in ruins, and Team JNPR with it.  Jaune has failed at everything else, so he’s going to do the only thing he can.  He’s going to save what’s left of his team.Jaune brings what remains of Team JNPR home.





	1. The End

Jaune thinks he might be in shock. People are moving all around him but he can’t really hear anything, or feel his own body, or make his eyes focus.

Grimm are everywhere. 

Beacon is gone. 

Pyrrha is dead. 

Ruby’s uncle had come back from the tower with only his unconscious niece and Pyrrha’s circlet. The dragon was frozen, Cinder was gone, and there wasn’t even a body to bury for Pyrrha, just the circlet and the shattered pieces of Miló. 

Someone who looks authoritative says something about students being sent home. Jaune wonders for a second how Pyrrha is going to go back to Mistral, and then he remembers. She’s not. 

He’s been sitting there for… he doesn’t know how long. Time doesn’t feel like it’s working quite right anymore. He’s been sitting for a while, in the somewhat-safe area that is holding everyone until they can leave for somewhere somewhat safer, when it suddenly occurs to Jaune that he has other people to worry about. As soon as the thought crosses his mind, his chest tightens with anxiety. Where are they? He hasn’t seen either of them since the beginning of the battle. They’re both incredibly powerful, but so is Pyrrha – _was_ Pyrrha – and – 

He finds them. Seeing them hurts almost as much as thinking about his partner, and he suddenly remembers that this is not the first time grimm have brought their world crashing down around them. 

Ren is sitting on a bench, leaning heavily against the wall behind him. There are bandages on his left arm and side and his face is pale the way it gets when he runs out of Aura. Nora is beside him, her jacket torn and more bandages wrapped around her waist, Magnhild leaning, battered, beside her. She is holding his hand too tightly and talking like she’s high on a sugar rush from pancakes, not sitting in the rubble of her school – too animated, too excited, fake like cheap paint over cracking glass. Ren’s face is blank and he doesn’t respond as Nora talks and talks. She’s gone into overdrive and he’s shut down, and it both relieves and pains Jaune to see them. They’re alive, but what is left for them? 

Jaune is moving slowly, both from the slow-hitting shock and the need to not startle his teammates. He gets closer to them and his heart twists when he hears exactly what Nora is saying. 

“– and they’ll probably let us back in, I mean Professor Luma _loved_ you, you were like her favorite student ever, she’d totally let you be her TA if you asked nicely, and I’m sure they would let me help with training if I showed Professor Kondile how much better I’ve gotten since we left, like I was good then but _boy_ am I better now – did you even see how hard I hit that beowolf earlier? I went _pow_ and he went _whoosh_ and I couldn’t even see where he landed! But like, you would be the best assistant because you actually do the things and you’re good at them and everything and you’re so patient you could teach a rock how to read, and I would be the best trainer like I’d get all the students accepted into Beacon and they would all be the _best._ I’m sure if we go back to Umbra they’ll let us stay there, maybe there’s an old trailer or something somewhere that they’re not using, it’s not like we need much space, and we’d totally earn our keep so really they’d be getting a really good deal, and it’ll be fine, you’ll see, Ren! I mean, it’s not like it’s the first time we’ve done this. We’re lots better now, and we’re not little kids anymore, and we can totally do this again Ren come on please it’ll be okay –” 

Jaune has heard enough. Here he is, all upset, and half of his team has _literally nothing left._ They hadn’t had much to begin with, and now that Beacon is gone the only things they own are the clothes they’re wearing and their weapons. They have no homes, no families, nothing. All of that had vanished the last time grimm had attacked them, and here Jaune sits moping while he has a huge safe caring family waiting for him if he can just figure out how to get home. 

He’s putting his foot down. The school is gone, Pyrrha is gone, everything is gone and grimm have taken over the entire town but Jaune can do this. He can help the teammates he had left. He can do this one thing. He can save his team, or what’s left of it. 

Jaune is taking JNPR home. 

.

(Jaune is taking JNR home.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so remember how i fixed the end of vol 3?
> 
> not anymore.
> 
> I LOVE JNPR SO MUCH IT HURTS
> 
> kicking myself a little because i had since the day v3 ended to write this – literally, i had this idea from the moment the season finished – and i didn’t start writing properly until like a week ago. also, this is my first time posting something before its 100% finished and edited so that is new and frightening. that also means i don’t know when chapter 2/others will come out. probably soon, because i am now headfirst back into RWBY Fandom Hell.
> 
> (also if Team RJNR isn’t called Regenerate i will personally go to austin and shout at rt because i need it to be)


	2. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JNR comes home. 
> 
> Prepare to meet the family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow that took a while. jaune has a lot of sisters, explanations/link in end notes. also, apologies for this mess of a chapter. there is no good way to introduce ten new characters without it being a disaster. i tried and then i gave it up, so here you go. 
> 
> also – yeah, we finally got ren and nora’s backstory (kinda) but this story was planned out way before that and i’m not changing it now. 
> 
> i am trying very hard and probably failing significantly to properly describe the current mindset of ren and nora. these are two people who have lost everything - twice over now - and who learned the hard way to rely on only themselves and each other. and just when that was changing, just when they were learning to open up to jaune and pyrrha, beacon happened. so they’re even more unstable now, and all the stress and fear and habits are coming back hard. 
> 
> essentially, last time the world ended, nora had been in shock and ren had had to take charge and keep them alive for a while (ha. got that part right i guess). that is possibly linked to his now-standard general exhaustion, something that nora secretly blames herself for. this time, after beacon, ren can’t handle everything being destroyed again and kind of turns off and goes away for a while. nora is not going to let anything happen to them, not this time. which contributes a little to her state of high anxiety and over-alertness in this chapter and the following. she wants to trust that this place is safe and these people are good, but she has also had a lot of experience suggesting otherwise. 
> 
>  
> 
> i'm still mad that this is the only fic in the jaune & ren & nora tag.

It was chaos in the Arc household. Dinner was almost ready, and although Isabelle had long ago learned how to cook for so many people, the house was fuller than it had been in a while. Antoinette, Camille and Corinne had all come home because of the national grimm emergency, the university had cancelled classes so Orianne was back full-time, and the rest of the girls had had school cancelled. This, of course, meant that they had very little to do all day and although Isabelle loved all her daughters very much, they were beginning to drive her up the wall, especially the twins.

Worst, Marie wouldn’t stop asking when Jaune was coming home. Isabelle couldn’t just tell her youngest daughter that she didn’t know where her only son was. So she smiled, made up excuses, and prayed every night that her boy was all right, that he would find his way back home. The communications system had been down since the first attack (and God if she didn’t think every minute about that – about Beacon – about Jaune –), so she spent every day knowing nothing, hoping for the best, and fearing the worst.

The food preparations were in their last stages and Fleur, the designated Dinner Helper of the evening, had wandered off to go bother Nicolette so Isabelle was mostly on her own. Jacques and Orianne were still setting the table, and Isabelle could see them through the kitchen doorway, her husband laughing at something snarky Orianne had just said, probably about the napkins judging by the way the girl was gazing down her nose at them, imitating her father’s boss most likely.

The doorbell rang, and Isabelle thought nothing of going to answer it after making sure that all the food would survive a few moments of inattention. She brushed her hands off on her feather-printed apron and went to check the front door.

Nothing could have prepared her for the sight. Jaune, her son, her baby boy, was standing there on the doorstep. His hair was longer now, his armor battered, Crocea Mors hanging heavy at his side, and his eyes had changed – harder, sadder. _What happened to you?_ a part of Isabelle wondered as she stared at him in blank shock.

He wasn’t alone. Behind him were two others, a tall boy in a torn green coat, looking more exhausted than Isabelle had ever seen anyone, leaning on a shorter girl with fiery orange hair flaring around her head, who looked like she was considering just up and bolting.

Her son looked far too old, far too tired, but he smiled at her and it was still the same smile. “Hi Mom,” he said quietly.

Isabelle considered herself a very calm woman. She had to be, after raising eight children. She prided herself on her ability to maintain her composure in almost any situation.

This was not one of those situations.

Behind her, Corinne called out a question that Isabelle couldn’t quite process. She was apparently taking too long to answer the door. The nurse-in-training ran out of patience and came to the door herself, repeating impatiently, “Who is it, Mom? Is it those neighbor kids again? I’ll make Camille chase them away if they’re bothering –” she stopped dead, train of thought derailing spectacularly, staring at her little brother standing in the doorway. “I… Jaune ? What–” then, apparently short-circuiting a little, she spun around and shouted at the top of her lungs, “DAD! JAUNE’S HOME!”

Complete and utter chaos reigned for the next ten minutes. All six other sisters came stampeding to the front door, their father on their heels, and everyone was shouting at once. The first thing Marie did was punch her big brother square in the stomach and then burst into tears. Corinne lifted him clear off his feet, swinging him around and then complaining about how heavy he was. Orianne hugged him so tight he lost his breath, face buried in her brother’s neck. Camille couldn’t stop smiling. The twins nearly knocked him right off his feet with their joint tackle-hug, and Antoinette gave him a big mushy big-sister kiss that he was too happy to even whine about. Isabelle and Jacques couldn’t even speak, but their bone-creaking hugs said all they needed to say.

Then, very suddenly, the Arc family reunion remembered that they were not alone. Isabelle glanced at the other two; the boy’s pink eyes were set staring at a point on the doorframe, but the girl was staring at them all with a mixture of awe and longing in her eyes.

It was only at that moment that Isabelle realized who the two were. Jaune hadn’t exactly left in a great way (she had never expected her son to sneak away to become a Hunter, and to steal the family weapon to boot!), but they had had at least a bit of communication since then. It had been enough to know that Jaune had become a team leader, and that his partner was the famous Champion Pyrrha Nikos and his teammates were two other students named Nora Valkyrie and Lie Ren.

Everyone knew what Pyrrha Nikos looked like (well, apparently Jaune hadn’t when he met her. But her son had never been too observant), and it was obvious that neither of the people standing behind Jaune were her. Maybe she had gone home after the disaster at Beacon – although how anyone was supposed to get to Mistral with the infrastructure the way it was right now was beyond Isabelle – but something in her son’s eyes told her that was not the case.

She had been angry at first. Her only boy running away to become a Hunter – the most dangerous profession in the world – when he didn’t even have his Aura unlocked (and wasn’t exactly the best warrior, to put it nicely) – yes, she had been angry. Jacques, too, and little Marie had been perhaps the most furious, enraged at her hero big brother for going off to fight grimm and leaving her behind. But the anger had faded, and Isabelle had been proud of her son. Ozpin didn’t make just anybody team leader. The headmaster had clearly seen something in Jaune, something that perhaps even his family had missed, and had chosen him to lead Team JNPR.

Isabelle had wanted to meet JNPR. According to Jaune’s stories, Pyrrha was amazing, even helping him train outside of classes. For someone so famous, she turned out to be quite shy, but seemed to like Jaune a lot. Nora was fifteen pounds of lighting in a five-pound bottle, but she had been an enthusiastic follower and was always up for trying anything. Ren was quiet, almost a shadow to Nora’s brilliance, but he gave good advice and could explain everything Jaune didn’t understand. He had the patience of a saint, dealing with the other three of them on a daily basis.

Isabelle had wanted to meet Team JNPR, but not like this. Not when her baby looked like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks, not when his teammates seemed so wounded, not when there was one member missing.

Jaune finally seemed to notice the attention his friends were receiving from his family. “Oh, uh. Mom, Dad, this is Ren and Nora. They’re my teammates, in JNPR.”  
Marie looked like she was about to ask who the “P” of “JNPR” was, but Antoinette, quick-thinking genius that she was, smacked a hand over her littlest sister’s mouth first. “Nice to meet you both,” she said, and her smile was nowhere near false. “I have to say, I’ve been wanting to meet the people who can put up with this one for so long.”

Nora laughed, almost hiding the flinch of pain the movement caused her, and Ren smiled just a little, and Jaune’s protesting squawk sounded so normal that it would be easy to forget the reality of the situation. Maybe.

Antoinette had broken the ice, but there were still twelve people standing crowded in and around the front door, and Isabelle was not going to let dinner burn just because her son had finally come home. She took a deep breath. “All right, everyone,” she announced, using her Mom Voice as Nicolette called it. “Jaune, you had good timing. Dinner is ready, and we are all going to eat it. Nicolette, Marie, I need you to go set two more places at the table. Corinne and Fleur, come help me get the food ready to go out. You three,” Jaune straightened up at his mother’s attention, but Ren and Nora seemed more along the lines of deer-in-headlights (Isabelle would think about that later), “go wash up and change if you need to. Hurry, though, the food won’t wait long!”

*

Nora hadn’t been involved in anything like a family dinner for… years, now. She wasn’t going to count. But even back then, it had been just her and her parents. She was loud, yes, and her mother had been too, but it was nothing like the mayhem of an Arc dinner.

Ren was still mostly out, and it wasn’t by accident that he ended up seated between Nora and Jaune, a buffer of familiarity and protection. By habit, Nora put herself on his left side. He needed her there all the more now; his shoulder was even worse after the Battle of Beacon, and Nora was afraid that with the way it had gone the first time, it might not heal at all now. Jaune sat to Ren’s right, all three chairs very close together, and his family seemed to understand that something was more than a little wrong but they were also specifically not asking, at least not yet. She guessed they were just as surprised as she and Ren were. Jaune hadn’t talked about it, but she knew he had been worried about how his family would take his surprise homecoming.

She didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Okay, yeah, maybe it was more than a little overwhelming, but Nora had decided to shove the shell-shock into a little box that she could worry about later. Right now it was people time. Also food time, which was very important and oh my god why could Jaune not cook this was amazing and he had failed them all as a leader because this was even better than Ren’s cooking. People suddenly became significantly less important.

Jaune hadn’t been exaggerating – there were a lot of sisters. Nora probably wouldn’t remember any of them by tomorrow morning, but for now she just smiled and nodded in between inhaling more food than she had eaten since Beacon was still standing, made sure that Ren was eating at least a little, and keeping an eye on the doorways and windows.

She knew that Jaune’s parents were named Isabelle and Jacques. Well, actually he had told her and she had promptly forgotten, but Ren probably still remembered so that was good enough. Also, if Isabelle cooked this well Nora was going to adopt her because, again, _oh my god_. They were both nice and smiling but Nora could see worry in their eyes. It didn’t seem like the fake kind, though, and there wasn’t any anger (she had gotten really good at seeing when people were angry, no matter how well they tried to hide it), so she decided they were just concerned about their son. After all, they had probably only heard that Beacon had been attacked and nothing more.

_(At least Nora had_ known, _with her family.)_

But Jaune was okay, home safe, and if they were lucky his parents would let them stay for a little while, at least. Maybe, if they were really lucky, they would let them stay for more than a little. The food was really good, and it was hitting Nora all at once how long it had been since she had sat at a table with a family, even if it wasn’t hers.

Nora’s family had been small, if not quiet. The Arc house was enormous, from the glimpses Nora had seen inside it and the brief time coming up to the building. _Way_ bigger than the tiny cottages Nora and Ren had grown up in. The house was huge, but it was packed. Jaune hadn’t been kidding around; there was more family here than Nora knew what to do with.

Antoinette was the oldest. She was some kind of Dust scientist, which Ren would probably be interested in once he got back to himself (she didn’t think about when that would be. He would be fine. He had to be). Even though Nora didn’t pay a lot of attention most of the time, she was pretty sure Antoinette was the one Jaune had talked about a lot. She was like his hero.

Camille was maybe a year younger than Antoinette, and she might be Nora’s favorite, because _she designed Hunter weapons. _She wasn’t a Hunter – Jaune was the only one in this generation – but she helped Hunters design and modify their weapons, and came up with better materials and methods and techniques. Nora wouldn’t give up hunting for anything, but wow she was a fan of the idea of making weapons _all the time._ So cool.  
__

Then there was Corinne, who was a nurse. The conversation was trying really hard to stay light and avoid any and all heavy topics (although Nora knew those were coming eventually), so nobody really talked about what was obvious. Corinne’s classes had been cancelled because of the disaster, but she was working double shifts as an assistant at the hospital, also because of the disaster. But they weren’t talking about that right now.

Orianne was only a little bit older than Jaune. She, too, had missed her brother a lot, and sat at his other side where Ren wasn’t. She almost said what she was studying, and then changed the subject. Nora had heard enough, though. Orianne Arc wanted to study grimm. Nora didn’t really know why – all she cared was that they were smashable – but hey. Maybe studying them would give Hunters more smashing tips.

The twins were Fleur and Nicolette. Nicolette talked more, her older twin staying quieter and looking a little less trusting of Nora and Ren. Hey, Nora didn’t blame her. She wouldn’t trust a couple of strangers invading her home, if she had one. Okay, nope, not thinking about that either.

Marie was the littlest of all of them, and seemed to be struggling between being angry at Jaune for leaving and being happy that he was back. She didn’t really seem to understand what had happened, and mostly appeared to think that Jaune had left to do… something interesting and was back home now with some friends.

Nora couldn’t help staring at her throughout the dinner, talking and laughing with her mother and father and sisters and brother. When Nora had been that age… she and Ren must have just gotten into Umbra. So their lives were finally starting to get better. Before that – she didn’t think about that time much. That time was when she became so aggressive over food (and everything else), and when Ren became so tired (and never really stopped). That was the time she had learned how awful the world was; when she understood why grimm existed.

The dinner was amazing. Nora firmly kept her mind in nice things and kept an eye on Ren and Jaune and the doorways and the windows, and everything was good.  


Then came bedtime. They had been sleeping wherever they could as they tried to get to Jaune’s home, so beds were a new thing again (again, unwanted reminders of The Time Nora Didn’t Want To Think About).

At first, Isabelle suggested that Ren sleep in Jaune’s room and Nora be with Orianne.

“No!” Nora’s voice came out a little sharper than she meant it to. Jaune’s mother looked a little startled, but Jaune quieted Nora with a hand on her shoulder and spoke.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said, much calmer than Nora’s definitely-not-panic. “Do we still have those cots? They can both stay with me, then we won’t disrupt the rest of the house.”

Isabelle gave her son a hard stare, her pale blue eyes promising some serious talking later. Then it cleared like sun coming out from behind clouds and she smiled gently. “Of course. I’m sorry, I should have known you would want to stay together. Orianne, Corinne, can you two help Jaune get the beds out? Nicolette, Marie, it’s your turn for dishes.”

Jaune’s sisters brought the cot beds from whatever distant closet they were kept in to his room, where Nora, Ren, and Jaune were sitting. The two girls didn’t say anything about the fact that the three had no luggage to speak of, just chatted lightly with their brother about the latest gossip of the neighborhood and how many chores he was going to have to catch up on to make up for running away to Hunter School. When they were done they left, and only Corinne’s knowing glance at Ren’s shoulder and Nora’s side hinted that anything was wrong at all. Then the door closed, and the remains of JNPR were left alone.

They didn’t talk much. It had taken over a week just to get from Beacon to Domremy, and they were exhausted. Nora and Ren were still hurt, and all three of them were emotionally and physically drained, and none of them had had any time to recover from the events at Beacon. They hadn’t really talked about what had happened, at all. There hadn’t been time.

Now, they were just tired. Orianne had given Nora a t-shirt of a band she didn’t know and some pajama bottoms that were too long, and Jaune had dug out a long-sleeved shirt and pants for Ren and found clothes for himself (part of Nora noted that these had to be clothes Jaune hadn’t taken with him to Beacon, because those clothes were gone now), and all three of them were nearly asleep on their feet.

Nora was so worn out that she had almost lain down on one of the cots when Ren’s hand grabbed her wrist. Anyone else, and she would have broken his arm, but Ren – she knew him as well as she knew herself, and so all she did was twitch real hard, confusion fuzzing her brain. “Ren–?”

“We won’t sleep there,” he said. Ren had spoken barely a handful of words since the battle, so both Nora and Jaune turned to him, waking up enough to pay attention. Ren gazed from one to the other, looking just a little more there than he had since Beacon had fallen. “You know we won’t.”

Ren was right, always, and so Nora didn’t resist as he tugged them both over to Jaune’s bed and all three of them climbed in. It was definitely not a bed built for three people, but they didn’t care. Nora and Ren could never sleep unless they were beside one another, and even now that he was back in his own home, in his own bed, Jaune suddenly didn’t want to sleep alone.

Even with all three of them crowded into the little bed, it still felt too big. Something was missing. Someone was missing.

They didn’t speak, and soon fell into the deep sleep of the truly exhausted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here is The Summary for jaune's big mess of a family. completely made up, of course, but w/e. 
> 
> Jaune’s family  
> Jaune’s family lives in Domremy (Jeanne d’Arc’s hometown).  
> The Arc family is historically significant and important, although this has somewhat faded in the last few generations.  
> Jaune’s parents are named Isabelle and Jacques (the names of the real Jeanne d’Arc’s parents).  
> He has seven sisters (here we go):  
> Antoinette- 23, Dust scientist, Jaune’s favorite  
> Camille- 22, weapons designer  
> Corinne- 20, nurse-in-training  
> Orianne- 19, at university (interested in studying grimm – is somewhat ostracized because of this), close with Jaune  
> (Jaune is here, 18 years old)  
> Fleur- 15, Nicolette’s twin, more introverted but sharp  
> Nicolette- 15, Fleur’s twin, louder, nicer, struggles with academics  
> Marie- 11, hero-worships Jaune, very angry with him for leaving for Beacon without her
> 
> so many sisters. so many. 
> 
>  
> 
> (still calling RJNR Regenerate i don’t even care)


	3. Safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god
> 
> i am so sorry for the wait (voltron ate my brain and is still in the process of doing so), but i'm already working on chapter 4 and the completed outline for the rest of the story, and i'm going to try really hard not to let another month go by with no update. 
> 
> if you've been reading this and waiting, thank you. if you're just coming in, good timing and welcome! let us feel jnpr pain together.

When JNR woke, they didn’t know where they were. None of them had slept in a proper bed for days, trying so hard to get somewhere safe, following a faint distant beacon. The room was strange, foreign even to Jaune after the near-year spent at the school. Ren and Nora had never even seen it before.

The only reason none of them flat-out panicked upon waking was that they were together. Nora’s eyes flashed open fast, her body tensing in preparation to fight – strange place, strange people, strange bed – even though she was still injured. Ren’s body was ready to move before he had even woken up, never truly trusting that he and Nora (and Jaune, now) were really completely safe. Jaune didn’t process where he was for at least the first few minutes of wakefulness. It was his own bedroom, and it took him endless moments to recognize it. Maybe that more than anything showed how much had changed since he had last been home.

They woke up fearful, fight-or-flight echoing in their heads and muscles, but it was all gone the instant they sensed one another. Nora relaxed, tucking her head against Ren’s less-bad shoulder and reaching out to take Jaune’s hand. Ren had hardly been awake to begin with, but now he slipped back into true sleep, assured that the people he cared about were safe and nearby. No threats for now.

Jaune rolled onto his back, holding tightly to Nora’s hand and staying as close to Ren’s side as he could without hurting the other boy. Everything had changed since he had last slept here. Before, he had been nothing, nobody, just a painfully average boy lost in the midst of some highly-talented sisters, born to a name with history but unable to even begin to measure up to it. Now… now he had become a Hunter, a leader, had fought monsters and saved lives, carried on the Arc name. He had been given a team – him, Jaune Arc the nothing, had been chosen to _lead_ JNPR – and then he had gone and lost it.

No, he realized as Nora gave a snort and Ren shifted, pressing one leg against Jaune’s ankle, not quite. Pyrrha was gone, and that hurt more than he had realized anything could hurt, more than any training exhaustion, more than any grimm injury. He blamed himself for what had happened. As much as he’d grown, he hadn’t been strong enough to help her, hadn’t been good enough to save her. But he still had his team, half of it. And they had him. And they had made it to Jaune’s home, where they could be safe, recover and heal from Beacon. Physically, and… well. Pyrrha.

As cramped as the bed was, none of them could escape the feeling there was supposed to be another person there with them.

*/center

JNPR spent most of the next few days sleeping. They would wake long enough to eat and let trained-nurse-sister Corinne check and re-bandage injuries, then sleep again. After Beacon and the stress and desperation on the road, the team needed all the restoration they could get.

For their part, the Arcs were surprisingly accommodating to their son’s spontaneous homecoming-plus-two, and let them rest. Jaune himself seemed to be mostly physically alright – complete with Corinne checkup to confirm – but whatever had happened at Beacon had hit him hard; it wasn’t the kind of thing one recovered from overnight, rest or no. This wasn’t the kind of hurt anyone in his family was trained to heal. His new teammates Ren and Nora were… worse off, injury-wise, but they would heal. Corinne was careful around them, moving slowly and steadily and not commenting on the scars too old to be from the Fall of Beacon.

For the most part, the Arcs left the remains of Team JNPR to its own devices for the first few days. Those devices essentially involved sleep and food and not much talking, especially about anything real or important. The bed was crowded but there was someone missing. They slept but woke frequently, fear and nightmares invading even this safe haven.

*

Of course, Jaune knew he couldn’t just come home after the worst calamity in years with only two of three supposed teammates and _not_ be questioned to within an inch of his life by his parents, and probably Antoinette at least if not Camille and Corinne too. They had refrained for the first while, letting him and Nora and Ren just rest, but now it was Interrogation Time.

He didn’t blame them. Still didn’t mean he wanted to talk. But talk he would, because even exhausted he could see the concern in his mother’s eyes, the tightness of his father’s mouth. They had heard about what had happened at Beacon, and they hadn’t even known if their son was alive. And then he showed up out of nowhere with two friends? Yeah, Jaune could understand why they wanted to talk.

“It was the final round of the tournament. One-on-ones.”

“We know,” his father said. “We were watching.”

“The screens were on at work too,” Corinne added from beside Antoinette. “It was amazing.”

Jaune almost smiled, remembering how proud JNPR had been at Pyrrha’s entrance into the round. “My partner Pyrrha was the one we chose to participate. She was up against one of our other friends, Penny.”

“The robot?” Corinne asked.

Jaune hid his flinch, feeling Nora twitch beside him. “Yes. We didn’t know that, though. She was just a friend.

“Something went wrong, though. We didn’t know what had happened until it was too late. Penny – Penny broke, and there were grimm everywhere, and the White Fang was attacking, and the school got destroyed. And then we came home.”

He was skipping over a lot, and it was obvious. Jacques leaned forward. “Jaune.” Jaune stared hard at his twisting fingers, pressed into his knees. “Jaune.” He looked up. “What happened to your partner?”

There it was. There was the pain. He had been trying so hard not to think about her – it was impossible, he knew, but he’d tried. Tried to focus on saving his teammates, on getting home, on seeing his family. Not on her. Not on his failure to save her.

But he had to tell them someday. Jaune took a deep breath. “She died.”

Jacques leaned back, and Isabelle gasped, and Corinne covered her mouth with her hand, and Camille looked away. His oldest sister, Antoinette, just looked at him with sadness in her eyes. Her little brother had been through a lot, through too much.

Once he had said it, he couldn’t stop. “I tried to save her. There was a lot happening, and the Headmaster needed her to do something important, and there was a woman who fought with fire and she attacked us, and I tried to help but Pyrrha – Pyrrha said she was sorry and then she sent me away.” Nora pressed her body hard against Jaune’s side, and he almost startled when he felt a hand slide into his, holding tightly, but he knew Ren’s touch by now and it was an anchor. Jaune’s breath shook when he inhaled. “And then she died.”

There. He’d said it. Pyrrha Nikos was dead, and it was his fault.

“Oh Jaune.” Isabelle took a deep breath, steadying her hands by pressing them together. This wasn’t something a mother could fix. Her son had experienced something far too terrible for a boy his age – for anyone. She could do nothing, and it hurt.

Jaune needed to change the subject, or he was going to start crying and never stop. “Mom, Dad – this is kind of sudden, but we haven’t talked about it and it’s kind of important. Can Ren and Nora stay?”

He felt Nora stiffen against his side, and Ren straightened up a little. Part of Jaune was glad that his friend was finally starting to respond to things again, but he had to focus. His parents needed to let Ren and Nora stay with him, but he didn’t want there to be too many questions why. Even after so many months as JNPR, even as team leader, Jaune didn’t know the whole story. He knew that their families had died in a grimm attack when they were very young, and that they had somehow made it into Umbra Academy a few years later, but other than that, the details were sparse. Some of it wasn’t hard to fill in – Nora was really aggressive about food, and Ren was always tired, and they were rarely out of arm’s reach of one another – but they hadn’t told him and Pyrrha much about their lives. Nora could talk for hours, but she hardly ever mentioned life before Beacon, and next to nothing before their time at Umbra.

Jaune knew enough, and so he didn’t press. If things became relevant, he trusted that his team would talk to him. Until then, he wasn’t going to pry. He just had to hope that his parents would do the same.

Isabelle’s brows furrowed. “But, your families –”

Jacques interrupted. “Of course.” His golden eyes were strangely knowing as he looked Jaune’s friends over. “You can stay here as long as you like. Let us know if you need anything.”

Just like that. Nora blew out a big breath and hid the shaking in her hands by grabbing each of her boys with one. Ren said nothing, but Jaune could see how his teammate’s body relaxed just that much. They were safe. They had somewhere to stay, and they could be together, with each other and with Jaune. That kind of security was of high value to people like them.

Jaune would talk to his parents later, make sure that they were aware of the situation and knew not to pry, but for now, it was looking like everything would be okay. They were together, safe, able to rest and recover. They would be okay.

* * *

“Jaune.” His father’s voice startled Jaune out of his daze, and he turned to see Jacques standing at the other end of the hall in the doorway of his study. The older man beckoned to him. “Come here for a minute. I want to talk to you.”

Jaune wondered what this could be about. Ren and Nora were sleeping, or at least Ren was sleeping, Nora might just be lying beside her partner and waiting for him to wake up; it was essentially the same thing. He was on his own.

It was weird to think about it – the last time he had been home, Jaune had been just himself. Just Jaune. Kind of a wimp, a little bit of a failure, lost in the midst of seven sisters – and it wasn’t like Dust scientist Antoinette and weapons designer Colette set the bar very low. Even little Marie was good at drawing. Jaune had been kind of a nobody.

Now he was the leader of JNPR. The last time he had been in this house, Jaune hadn’t even known famous Pyrrha Nikos, much less Ren and Nora. His bed had been his own, hunting had only been a dream, and he had never seen a real grimm. Now he had gained a team and lost a quarter of it, his bed was cramped with two extra people in it, and he had wielded Crocea Mors against every kind of grimm he knew.

A lot had changed.

Jacques closed the door of the study and turned to his son with a strange expression on his face. Serious, sad – Jaune couldn’t quite place it. “Dad –”

“I know that none of us can ever truly understand what you have gone through in the past few weeks,” his father said, almost hurriedly. “None of your sisters are Hunters. Your mother is a civilian. They are not combatants.”

Jaune frowned. Yes, that was true. Camille designed weapons, and Jaune knew that Orianne wanted to study grimm (despite everyone’s dislike of the idea), but wasn’t Dad –

“I was a Hunter. You know that. I left when I married your mother, and you’ve met my partner, although I don’t know if you remember her.”

“I do,” Jaune interrupted. “I do remember her.” His father looked surprised. “She came to stay for your birthday once, right?” Jaune asked, and Jacques nodded. “I was little, but I thought she was so cool. Her war-fan-pistols, how she walked, how she talked, the way she made you smile – she was the best grown-up I had ever met.”  
Jacques let out a startled laugh. “I’ll make sure to tell her next time I see her.”

Jaune nodded. “She was what made me want to be a hunter.”

Almost playfully, his father raised an eyebrow. “That was it? Some cool lady with sharp weapons shows up one time when you’re a little kid, and you want to be just like her? It wasn’t your old man?”

Jaune laughed, hands raised in mock surrender. “I always thought you were cool, Dad. But you weren’t hunting anymore. Catherine was. She was the real thing, and she was so strong and so smart. I wanted to be just like her.” He ducked his head a little. “And if that meant I could be a little like you too, that would have been nice.”

His father’s hug startled him, but after a second he returned the gesture. “You’ve made us all very proud,” Jacques said, and Jaune could feel the words against his chest. “We were so proud, and so afraid when we heard what had happened at Beacon. That – even a seasoned Hunter could easily have died in a disaster like that. You were brave, but you were young, and we didn’t relax until you came home safe and sound.”

Jacques pulled back a little, though he did not let go of his son’s hands. “When you told us what happened… I am so sorry, Jaune. That is a terrible thing to go through for anyone, especially kids as young as you.”

He continued almost hurriedly, as if he needed to tell his son this story. “I wanted to talk to you, Jaune, because although you knew I used to be a Hunter, and you had met Catherine, you didn’t know everything. Team MRJC was good, but we weren’t perfect. Michael was a good leader, but he and Catherine argued a lot. Roue worked well with her partner and got along with all of us, but she tended to brush things off too easily and not care much about anything. Catherine didn’t think before she acted. And I… I was so excited to finally be on a real team, and to work with Catherine, that I didn’t always think very clearly. I just followed.”

Jacques took a deep breath. “I think it was in the last years at Haven. We hadn’t graduated yet, but we were close. It was a routine mission, right up until it wasn’t. We had spread out too much. Roue got caught off guard by a beowolf, and none of us got there in time.

“I left a few years later. Catherine and Michael are still hunting, and from what I hear sometimes they even team up. They were always the best of all of us.”

Jacques gave his son a tiny, sad smile. “I didn’t lose everything. Roue was my friend and teammate, but she wasn’t my partner. Haven didn’t fall. It felt like the end of the world, for a while, but I could still know that the universe was standing. It wasn’t like now, but I just… I wanted you to know. I don’t know what it feels like for you, not really, but I might be able to understand just a little. If you ever want to talk.”

Jaune didn’t know what to say. It was true, not everything about the two situations was the same, but loss was loss. His father had lost a teammate too. He knew what that felt like. It hurt, because no one should ever have to feel that, but it also helped. Jaune could talk to his father about this. It wasn’t just him and Ren and Nora dealing with the fallout of losing a teammate and partner. Terrible as it was, it was reassuring to have an adult who knew what this felt like, and who was still alive and alright years later. There was a little bit of hope there, more than Jaune had been feeling so far.

He pressed himself back into the hug, relishing the feeling of being held, and mumbled into his father’s chest, “Can I tell Nora and Ren? We – it could be good, for us to have someone to talk to that isn’t us about this. About… about her.”

Jacques nodded, pressing a kiss to his son’s head. “Anything you want to talk about, her or anything else, I’m here. For you, and for Nora and Ren too.”

Another part of Jaune clicked _home._  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, we still know essentially nothing about jaune's family, so i just winged it. wung it? flapflap. more made-up people bc i had to fill out the rest of jacques' team.


	4. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hwhoops. did it again. but i’m sloooowly shortening the time between updates, and the outline is vaguelymostly done? it’s hard to outline something that only has the barest thread of real plot. i'm working on a lot of things at the same time and the semester is well on its way to finals madness, but i'll do my darndest to keep from going too long between chapters. 
> 
> a note: there’s a bunch of backstory bits for nora and ren in this chapter, but they come from my own personal headcanons, designed long before v4’s release and i ain't changing it now. i made up all of jaune’s ridiculous enormous family, i can do it with ren and nora too. it can be read on its own, but if you want to see what i had come up with in all its absurd detail, you can check it out [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8203772).

Adjusting to being back home was strange for Jaune. Even though he hadn’t really been gone for that long, the time at Beacon felt like a lifetime. He had grown unused to sharing space and time and things with his sisters, to having chores to do around the house, to having his parents around. It felt strange to not have classes, or homework, or training.

_(It felt strange to not have his partner at his side.)_

Ren and Nora were feeling it too. They hadn’t lived in a house for so long. There were many things had become unfamiliar or had been lost before they could become part of their life, and the pair were complete strangers to the complex process of sharing a house with so many other people. Jaune talked to his parents and sisters and explained enough that his teammates wouldn’t be questioned for their odd behavior, and they did seem to be willing to learn, so there was that.

After a few days, Ren seemed to be coming back to himself. Jaune hadn’t realized how worried he’d been about it. After Beacon his teammate had essentially shut down, and while they had had times at school when Ren would seem to go away a little, it had never been this long or this severe. Considering their past, though, Jaune could kind of get it. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a relief when Ren started responding to people and holding conversations.

Nora, too, was beginning to unfurl. She’d been wound tight for the first few days, ready at the slightest provocation to fight or fly (and knowing Nora, fight would come first). “Home” didn’t mean much to Nora anymore, and so she had hardly relaxed at all when they had made it to the safe place that was Jaune’s home. But day after day went by without the slightest hint of danger, and even Nora could only stay on guard for so long. She was never going to completely relax – none of them might, now – but she wasn’t on hyperalert anymore, and it showed. She joked more, smiled more, didn’t pay quite as much attention to doors or windows or passing movements. She was going back to normal Nora.

But normal was always going to be a little different now. They were all warriors now, Hunters even if they hadn’t officially graduated. They had seen combat. They had seen death. For Nora and Ren, again, for Jaune, a first time that hit hard.

They still all shared Jaune’s bed. It had been assumed that Nora’s cot would eventually move to Orianne’s room and that Ren’s would stay in Jaune’s, but the whole team had so panicked at the idea of being separated – in different _rooms, _even (unheard of for Ren and Nora), and not even Jaune was comfortable sleeping alone (Ren’s presence in the same room was not going to be enough, not any more) – that the idea of separation was quickly abandoned. The rest of the family was still mostly of the belief that while the three were all in Jaune’s room they were each staying in their individual beds, but for JNR it wasn’t even a question. Each night, all three piled into Jaune’s definitely-not-made-for-three bed and slept there, as much as they could sleep on any given night._  
_

Transitioning from combatant to civilian life was harder than expected, even if it was just temporary. Heck, Jaune hadn’t even been a real “combatant” until just a few months ago (had it really been such a short time?), but it was like whiplash to come home to parents and siblings and chores and family meals and what had been normal life until so recently. If it felt like that for Jaune, he couldn’t even imagine what it must be like for Nora and Ren, whose families had been lost so long ago and had lived who knew where for who knew how long before Umbra and then Beacon. Jaune still didn’t ask, wouldn’t invade their privacy like that, but what he could infer was nothing good. The concepts of home and family were distant at best and painful at worst, and he tried to keep an eye on his team as his family rejoiced at his homecoming, knowing that it was something they would never experience again, that it could hurt them just to be there with him and his whole, safe family.

* * *

It was weird, being home again. Jaune had liked being away, just a little – for once, he had felt like he could be a real person, not just that one kind-of-hopeless brother buried in a mass of talented sisters. But now that he was home, he couldn’t be happier to see his sisters. Homesickness plus the fear and stress of the Battle of Beacon, and it was honestly kind of a relief to be home. Of course, soon enough he’d be irritated by Nicolette’s loudness and Camille’s weird hours and Antoinette’s habit of leaving her papers all over the house and Colette’s habit of reciting medical terms to herself as she did chores. But for now, he was basking in being surrounded by family. The things you miss.

*

Jaune and Orianne were close – aside from Fleur and Nicolette, who were totally cheating because _twins,_ they were the closest in age and had grown up more linked than most of the other siblings – but it was Antoinette who had always been Jaune’s secret if-he-had-to-pick-a-favorite sister. She was about six years older than he was and always off doing studies and research, but she gave sound advice and always listened to Jaune, even when he’d been a kind of hopeless loser (and okay, maybe he still was mostly that, but not quite as much because _hello, real-life team leader_ ). But he’d always told her everything, and it had felt weird to be away from her for so long at Beacon.

So when they were on dishes-duty together after lunch one day, the other two thirds of JNR going back to sleep and the rest of the Arc family off doing whatever they wanted to do on a sunny windy afternoon, Jaune ended up telling her everything. His anxiety about being a leader, the bullying, how amazing his teammates were, the difficulty of classes, the tournament, the Battle of Beacon, the loss of Pyrrha. How he’d barely gotten what remained of his team out alive.

Antoinette listened, replying in the spaces, but as Jaune detailed the Fall, she went silent. She didn’t speak, her focus on the soapy dishes in front of her, but when he finished, she turned the water off and looked up at him.

“It’s not your fault.”

He hadn’t even mentioned that part. Jaune carefully laid down the dish he’d been drying and met his sister’s eyes, blue to grey. “Antoinette,” he began.

“Jaune.” Her tone brooked no argument. “This was something far beyond you. I’ve learned some things about Maidens while studying Dust. That’s – it’s huge. I don’t know what your teacher was doing, choosing a student, but it was out of your hands. You stayed with her as long as you could, and she knew she could not let you fall with her. She was a Maiden. You were JNPR’s leader, and there was still some of that team that would need you after she was gone.”

Jaune stared at her. He could find no words. But… Antoinette was rarely wrong. Could Pyrrha really have been trying to save him? Of course she would, that was Pyrrha – but saving him to save the others?

Pyrrha had been trained so long to think that she was just a tool, a weapon; when she was told she was a Maiden and was needed to fight evil, of course she had accepted it, just as she had accepted every duty forced upon her since childhood. But she hadn’t allowed Jaune to go down with her.

They had been partners. They had been part of a team. That – that had changed their lives. For Pyrrha and Jaune, it had been opposite lessons. Pyrrha was a part, and did not have to stand on her own. Jaune was _someone,_ and needed to be able to think and act independently. Pyrrha could rely on others, Jaune could lead.

That was it. JNPR had been bright and beautiful, and Pyrrha knew that it could not fade when she was gone. She had made the choice Jaune could not. He couldn’t help her, but – _a torn green coat, a pink skirt stained with blood_ – he could help them. If Jaune had gone to the tower with Pyrrha, he wouldn’t have been able to change anything. At best, he might have slowed Cinder down for the fraction of a second it would have taken her to crush him. He would have been a moth against a forest fire.

But here… Jaune was the only one of JNPR with a functional family. Pyrrha’s family loved her, albeit in their own distant practical way, and Ren and Nora had no family but each other. Jaune may be a bit of a loser, but his death would have shattered the Arc family. And his death would have left nothing of Team JNPR at all, because he and Pyrrha would have burned and Ren and Nora, if they had even survived the battle, would have been left alone again, which might as well be death for the loss it would leave them with.

Jaune Arc was the leader of Team JNPR. His partner had met her destiny head-on, and she had gone knowing that he would keep the rest of the team safe. Beacon was left in ruins, but Jaune brought Ren and Nora home with him. They were alive. They were healing. They had fallen, but they could help each other back up. Pyrrha was dead, but JNPR was not.

Antoinette didn’t need to say anything. She watched her brother, standing there looking like he’d been struck by lightning, and smiled. The dishes could be finished later. Drying her hands, she left. It would be some time before Jaune remembered how to move, to go find his teammates. His team.

*

Nora didn’t exactly pay much attention to people. There were very few humans she cared about, and the rest were at best irrelevant. At worst, they were dangerous, and then she would pay attention to them, just for the amount of time it took to squash them flat.

But Jaune had become a person who mattered. And he had a family. And that family was taking care of all of JNPR (all of what was left of JNPR), even though they’d never met Nora or Ren before and had no reason to trust them or care about them at all.

That… that confused Nora, more than a little. She wasn’t used to people caring. Why did they care about who she was or how she felt? But they didn’t ask questions, and there was always food (always – how did they do that?), and they weren’t trying to separate her from Jaune or Ren, so she guessed they were okay.

Nora was generally a loud person. That was just how she was. But when she came into the kitchen and saw one of the sisters – O-something… Ore… Orianne! that one! – sitting at the table drawing something, she was apparently a little too quiet in her approach, because when she leaned over and said, “Your deathstalker’s mouthparts are too small,” the girl just about fell out of her chair.

“Nora!” she exclaimed, once she regained her balance. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Nora shrugged. She hadn’t noticed her own accidental sneakiness. “Besides that bit, though, your drawing’s pretty good.”

“Thanks.” Orianne grew a little quieter.

“Ever seen a real one?” Nora asked, then kicked herself mentally. _When would this girl have ever seen a deathstalker? She’s not like you!_

“No. I’ve never actually seen a live grimm. Nobody wants to let me anywhere they might go.”

Nora sat down across from Orianne, reaching out to shuffle through the papers stacked on the table. “Why would you want to go near one?” she asked distractedly, gazing at a drawing of two beowolves howling. Orianne had gotten the crouch right, the structure of the beasts’ bodies that let them switch from bipedal to quadrupedal so easily.

Orianne was staring at the table. This was maybe a bad topic, although Nora wasn’t sure why. Orianne was the one sitting in the kitchen drawing monsters, not her. The boarbatusk was pretty accurate too, and Nora shivered a little looking at the tiny rage-filled eyes, even if they were just pencil on a sheet of paper. “I want to know what they are,” Orianne said, her voice gone narrow and hard like she was used to this argument. “I want to know where they came from. How they’re built. Why do they dissolve when they die, instead of rotting like everything else? Do they breed? Do they grow? How do they think?”

Nora glanced up from a sketch of a nevermore’s talons. She… had never thought of that. “Why?” she asked. “To kill them easier?”

Orianne shrugged, but Nora’s response seemed not to be as bad as she’d expected. “I guess. I just – they’re part of the world we live in. So why do we know almost nothing about them? Why do beowolves hunt in packs but boarbatusks are never together? Are creeps immature grimm or are they their own species? Do grimm even _have_ species?”

Nora laughed. “You should go find out.” Orianne stared at her. “I want to know now!” Nora exclaimed, honest and earnest. “I mean, I’m all for smashing grimm, I’m never going to stop doing that. But hey – you have questions, and the answers are somewhere. Maybe you’ll find out better ways to smash them, or maybe you’ll figure out how to make them leave towns alone. That would make our jobs way easier.”

Orianne looked a little like Nora had hit her in the face with Magnhild. But it wasn’t quite bad – there was a spark in her eyes. Nora knew that spark, had felt it herself. Sometimes, all you needed was one person to tell you that you could do the thing.

Grimm were terrifying monsters, that wasn’t up for question. But Nora – and probably most Hunters – had never thought farther than that. All that mattered to a Hunter was that the grimm could be killed, not why it was there or how it thought. It didn’t exactly make sense to Nora, but a lot of things didn’t make sense to her. Sometimes they did for other people – she knew that well, after living with Ren for so long. He understood some things, she understood other things, it worked out. Maybe Hunters could use a little help, and if Orianne could be the one who understood what they didn’t, who was Nora to tell her not to try?

Nora had never been interested in the withholding of information. It had never led to anything good, not once in her entire life. If Jaune’s sister wanted to learn about grimm then she should. And besides, the things she found could change the world.

The world could use some changing, in Nora’s opinion.

*

Having eight children, Isabel was well-used to cooking. Corinne and Nicolette seemed to enjoy it well enough, and Antoinette was good despite having little interest (the scientist in her translated well to ingredient measurements and cooking chemistry), but Colette and Fleur were not fans of the kitchen, Marie whined whenever she had to be the assistant for the day, and Orianne and Jaune were completely and utterly hopeless.

So she was a bit surprised to see that in a very large household with little interest in cooking, one of Jaune’s teammates always seemed to be nearby when she was working.

Lie Ren, her son had told her, was quiet at the best of times, and it seemed that the Battle of Beacon had only made him more so. He was a shadow, really, always to the side of his partner Nora Valkyrie and Isabelle’s own son, neither of whom were particularly calm. Behind them, Ren almost disappeared.

Ren and Nora were polite, but really only interacted with Jaune. Isabelle had had maybe a handful of conversations with either one, and the two were rarely apart.   
So Isabelle was more than a little surprised to see him hanging around the kitchen.

“Do you need something?” she asked after a few minutes, stirring the filling for the second spinach lasagna. She tried to make her voice kind and inviting, knowing how fragile her son’s friends still were, but he still startled at the address.

“I…” he seemed to think for a moment, and then found his resolve. “Would you teach me?”

Isabelle blinked. She had not been expecting that. “Well,” she said, a little puzzled, “what do you want to know?”

Ren met her eyes, and she was surprised as always to be reminded of their color and the quiet power within them. “Everything.”

Jaune had asked that his family not question his teammates too much, so Isabelle knew next to nothing about the young man joining her. He moved almost silently, and Isabelle had to keep checking that he was actually still there. She wasn’t making anything fancy, just lasagna – food choices were a bit limited when there were this many people to feed – but her son’s friend watched her like a nevermore, not asking many questions but listening intently to her while she described each step carefully as she worked, aware that she had a devoted and interested audience even if he didn’t say much.

Isabelle wasn’t stupid. Jaune’s teammates had been through something terrible, she knew, and it wasn’t just the Beacon disaster that hung over them. Isabelle was good at people, and she hadn’t missed the signs in the behavior of both of her son’s new friends. That sort of wariness didn’t happen over the handful of weeks since Beacon. Jaune was shocked, wounded, but he still had faith. There was something – resigned, worn, in the eyes of Ren and Nora, something with origins much older than Beacon.

She also knew not everything healed as quickly as skin and muscle did. Isabelle knew that no matter how her motherly instincts hurt whenever she was around Ren and Nora, she couldn’t fix everything. Nora wasn’t going to stop looking at the windows and approaching each door with caution, but Isabelle would let her learn that the house was safe. Ren wasn’t going to stop flinching at sudden movements, but she would let him understand that no one in this house was going to hurt him. They were still going to behave strangely around food, protecting it and hiding it even though it would never run out here, but she would be patient. Hopefully they would be able to accept that here, at least, there would always be enough.

If working in the kitchen with Ren would help him feel more comfortable in the Arc house, Isabelle would be happy to have him there for every meal. She was surprised at how good an assistant he was – never in the way, but always there to help and able to do any side tasks that she set for him. Even though he’d said he wanted to learn everything, he clearly had experience cooking.

Amazing that out of a house with seven daughters, a son, and a husband, the teammate of her boy was the one here, in the kitchen, of his own choice and wanting so deeply to learn.

“You know,” she said as she stirred the sauce pot and he cut chives, “if you ever would like to help out in the kitchen again, feel free to come on in. You’re a godsend.” She smiled at her son’s friend. “Honestly, Ren, you may be the best assistant I’ve ever had.”

Ren looked a little startled at the comment, and she made a note to praise both him and Nora more for the things they did. They could use the encouragement, she was sure. “I… I will,” he finally said. Then he looked up, meeting Isabelle’s eyes – a rare action for the quiet boy. “I want to learn.”

“And learn you will,” Isabelle turned back to the sauce, satisfied. “After all, we have a neverending line of hungry family that will eat anything we try out.”

Ren’s laugh was faint but it made her heart swell to hear it. “That we do,” he said, and Isabelle thought of the way that Nora would eat anything she could get her hands on and snarl at anyone unfortunate enough to be in her way but always saved some for Ren, and thought that she just might understand.

*

Nora was meticulously going through every single item in every single drawer and section of Jaune’s desk, humming to herself.

Ren watched, and thought. Say it, don’t say it. Say it, don’t.

Say it. It was Nora, he could say it.

“Jaune’s mother reminds me of your dad.”

Nora stilled.

“She… how she’s always looking out for her entire family. Her – attentiveness.”

Nora was motionless. Maybe he had made a mistake. Maybe this was a bad idea.

Then, “Antoinette makes me think of your mother.”

Oh. That was why Nora had frozen so hard and fast. It was a strange feeling, a prod at an old wound. Strange, but maybe not quite painful.

They rarely spoke of their families, even with each other. That part of their lives was over, had been for a long time. Nothing could be done about it, and no good came of dwelling too long on memories. They had been good memories, wonderful memories – until the end had come, sharp and hard. Now those memories were stained with blood. There were always other things to do besides think about the past. Sometimes, Ren wondered if he was going to forget his parents’ faces one day.

_Jaune’s sister was like Mǔqīn?_ “Antoinette? The Dust scientist?”

Like Ren, Nora seemed to feel the need to explain her thoughts. “Not like in appearance or age or anything, duh. But –” she fumbled for the words, “she’s – it’s her brain.” At Ren’s look she huffed. “Her… thoughts. Her mind, it reminds me of your mom.” She growled at her own uncertainty. “I don’t… I can’t –”

“I understand.” And he did.

Nora got up and came over to curl at Ren’s side. “I miss them,” she murmured, heart-close. “It was – easier, back when we were alone. And at the schools. Anywhere but a house. A… a home.”

Ren leaned against her, and she laid her head on his shoulder. A home, but not their home. Not this one.

For Nora, home had been loud, messy, even though it only held her and her parents. No siblings, not like the Arc house, but Anja Valkyrie was an ursa of a woman, and her daughter took after her in all ways except her eyes. Valkyries tended towards eyes of the sky-blue to grey varieties, but Nora had the teal of her father Sig’s eyes instead. They were a wild family, but happy. Anja hunted and protected the village. Sig, a Hunter by education if not blood, assisted some times and cleaned the house and took Nora to school other times. Nora, little Nora, was energetic and bubbly and _very pink,_ even then. All the brightness with none of the shadow beneath. Fireworks at midsummer. Her parents did nothing but fan the flames, in the best way.

For Ren, home had been small and quiet, but filled with light and happiness. Lie Min was a tailor, and Ren loved to watch him work on everything, from mending holes in well-worn clothing to designing new outfits from thin air. Jiaying, Ren now knew, had probably been something close to a genius. She just _glowed,_ her mind soaring past anyone else’s understanding. She could solve any problem, fix any issue. Ren’s father had been a steady river, flowing smoothly; his mother had been a star. And Ren – Ren had still been quiet even back then, but it had been a warm, happy quiet, surrounded by the gentle sibilance of his father’s needle and the soft scratching of his mother’s pen.

Neither Ren nor Nora had had any siblings. Deep inside, Ren was glad for that now. He distantly remembered a want for a little sister, although he could no longer remember whether that wish had been before or after he met Nora. Now, though, he was glad for his only-child status, in some twisted way. It had been miracle enough for him and Nora to have survived the destruction of the grimm attack on the village, another child – especially if they had been a younger sibling – would have never made it, and Ren or Nora might have died trying to save them.

He didn’t think about that much anymore. He had a sister now, although his parents were as gone as hers. But even if he generally avoided the thoughts, sometimes memories would creep up on him. Fùqīn’s hands, Mǔqīn’s smile. The feeling of sunlight through the kitchen window, the low table he liked to sit at and draw while his parents cooked dinner, talking in low gentle voices.

Nora, he knew, was the same. Even her weapon echoed her Mama’s Brunhilde sledgehammer form, blended with the grenade-launcher of her Daddy’s Munin. Even her attachment to pancakes had its root in her childhood. The more talkative of them both, always, she was more likely to speak about her memories aloud. Her mother’s voice, telling Nora stories of the great Hunters of old. Her father’s booming laugh, the shadow he always cast the wrong way when he tried to sneak up on her and tickle her.

Ren was glad that Jaune still had his family. Maybe it was strange, but it felt good to know that other people still had homes, parents, siblings, people. Jaune wasn’t hardened the way Ren and Nora were. He could be _himself_ , without the forced growing-up that came with losing all your family at such a young age. Where Ren and Nora had been alone so long they had almost forgotten how to be with other people, Jaune had so much family he didn’t know what to do with them all.

And yet they were on the same team. JNPR. Maybe the universe had finally decided to give Ren and Nora a break. Being on a team had been such a risk, for them – if the others hadn’t gotten it, hadn’t understood them, it would have shattered the group before they could even start. But Jaune and Pyrrha… whether they knew it or not, those two had been the first people Ren and Nora had opened up to since the grimm had torn their homes apart.

JNPR had changed all their lives, for the better Ren thought, despite Pyrrha’s shadow casting long and dark over them. Pyrrha was gone now, and Jaune was having to learn how to deal with loss, and Ren and Nora were feeling the effects of taking another loss on top of the mountain they already held, but it had been… it had been something. Maybe that was another thing that couldn’t be named, the way Ren and Nora were _something_ even if they didn’t know the word for it.

JNPR had been; it still was, even after the loss of Pyrrha. Ren pressed his nose into Nora’s hair, feeling her hand heavy and close on his side, and thought of his mother’s dark eyes and his father’s brilliant hands. Plants grew back after being cut. JNPR had taken a loss, but Ren and Nora knew better than anyone that a hit wasn’t a fall, that they could come back. Jaune was new to this, but he had his family to support him, and Ren and Nora to stand by his side.

Ren closed his eyes and breathed. They would make it, together. They always had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there were a bunch of bits i wanted to include in this but couldn’t because they didn’t fit for whatever reason. here they are in brief summarized forms (i really should make a more coherent post or something for this stuff): 
> 
> \- jaune talks to marie. he’s her big-brother hero and he went off to fight grimm without her and she was mad. they’ve resolved it (aka he said sorry and she huffed and puffed at him but was too glad to have her brother back to really be angry). she knows some about hunting and grimm, but not really what goes on or what happened to pyrrha. she can tell her brother’s different, though, and resolves to punch anything that upsets him right in the nose (even if mom says that’s not the right thing to do). his new friends are okay, though. 
> 
> \- ren is so fascinated by isabelle because although he’s been the designated cook forever, he has never really had any training, much less resources or supplies. he learned through trial and error and just had to work with whatever they had. jaune’s family is relatively wealthy and isabelle enjoys cooking, so the arc kitchen is well-stocked. for ren’s cooking-brain, it’s absolute paradise, and it comes with a bonus real-live teacher! isabelle is just happy to have someone who’s actually interested. 
> 
>  
> 
> whee. next chapter’s gonna hurt. i apologize in advance.


	5. Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy good heavens i am so sorry for the wait; finals absolutely destroyed me. but they are done thank gods, and i can get back to writing. plus, the outlining is just about done so we have a concrete few more chapters and an actual ending! 
> 
> a couple notes on this chapter. this is the rough one. it hurt to write. mostly the things are in dreams, but can still be hard to read. there is talk of character death, both distant and recent. there’s a lot of fire. the issues that come with losing one’s family and growing up all but alone. the issues that come with losing someone close to you. bad dreams. a lot of them. feeling like there’s nothing left. feeling like you’re the cause of misfortune. it’s painful. all will end well because i am writing this and i do not stand for unhappy endings, but this is the low point. jnr’s been through a lot, and this is where most of it surfaces.

They didn’t sleep apart any more. Not since Beacon.

Ren and Nora had always shared a bed. Once, when it was too late at night and Ren and Pyrrha were recovering from a mission gone somewhat sideways, Nora had told Jaune that they did it because they had to be able to know that the other was still alive. After everything that had happened to them, nothing was certain, not even the life of the one other person in the world who mattered. They needed to be close, needed proof of existence, just to be able to sleep, even if the sleep was never really quite sound.

But now – with Team JNPR reduced by a quarter – Jaune finally understood. That sudden, hard loss; it made you question whether anything would really be okay again. Even now that he was safe and in his own house again, Jaune didn’t sleep very well. There were too many dreams. But being able to feel the others – to know that _(what was left of)_ his team was still alive and breathing and sleeping beside him – helped, just a little. Nora kicked and Ren always rolled onto Jaune’s arms and gave them pins and needles and the bed was definitely way too small for three teenagers, but Jaune had found that he didn’t sleep well unless they were all close and together.

Of course, this also meant that if any of them dreamed, the others knew about it almost instantly. This could be bad – if one had only just been able to fall asleep, it was a little irritating to have Jaune flop half of his body over, or for Nora to start talking in her sleep – but it was also good. It meant that they could sometimes stop the nightmares before they could really get started, or attempt damage control after they happened.

And Team JNR had a lot of nightmares.

*

_Jaune_

_“Jaune wake up right now!”_

Jaune sat up hard, and promptly smashed his face into Nora’s as she was leaning over him. They both fell back, Nora cursing under her breath and Jaune trying desperately to catch his own.

Ren’s hand on his own drew him back out of his head. “What did you dream?” the other boy murmured, his other arm reaching out to tug Nora off Jaune’s legs where she had been sitting, absently patting at her cheek.

Jaune frowned. He couldn’t always remember his dreams, but –

Fire. Fire, and the not-so-distant sound of monsters roaring, and –

Pyrrha.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. It was all he ever dreamed about, now.

_Flames, and grimm roaring, and the screams of citizens and Hunters alike as Beacon crumbled._

_It had been real, but this was a dream, and so Jaune was with Pyrrha at the top of the tower. He was there, but he was just as useless as ever. So he stood there as Cinder advanced upon Pyrrha, and he could do nothing but watch as, with a wave of the fire-eyed woman’s pale hand, his teammate caught fire as easily as a sheet of paper, as a scrap of silk._

_It took but an instant. Just a spark, and Pyrrha was nothing but ash. The diadem that she so often wore clattered to the stones, empty and scorched. Cinder laughed, and flames rose from her hair._

_But the dream hadn’t ended there. That would have been too easy. So in the dream, Cinder turned, and Jaune with her, although he could still not move of his own volition. On the other side of the tower lay Ren and Nora, injured and bleeding. Magnhild and StormFlower were nowhere to be seen. ___

_Cinder walked towards them slowly, a cat prowling toward her wounded prey. And once again, Jaune could do nothing as she lifted her hand, sparks flowing in the wake of her movement. Despite their injuries, Ren and Nora still tried to fight, still tried to protect each other. Nora could only rise to her knees, and there was no Magnhild in her hands, but she clenched her fists and the rage in her eyes nearly matched the flames flickering within Cinder’s. Ren could not stand at all, but he raised his hands – empty but nowhere near harmless – and a rose-colored barrier shimmered into existence. It deflected Cinder’s first arrow, but then the newly-stolen Fall Maiden slashed a hand through the air, eyes flashing, and the wash of flame that burst forth shattered the Aura barricade like a wall of glass before a boarbatusk._

_Nora shouted, wordless and enraged, but there was nothing she could do. Feral like a cornered animal, the Valkyrie lunged at the dark Maiden, but with a single wave of her hand Cinder tossed her aside. A flash – fire, not electricity, or Nora might have stood a chance – and Jaune watched another teammate burst into flames.  
Nora never did anything quietly. Where Pyrrha had been soft and belyingly gentle, nothing more than a flicker and a slow _ whoosh _as the dust sifted down, Nora was a firestorm, bursting violently in a gout of scarlet, flaring out and up ferociously. But it did nothing. Cinder was immune to the flames, immune to the Valkyrie’s rage. She didn’t so much as blink as the fire billowed out, and then Nora was gone._

 _Standing stock still across the tower, paralyzed like he was the stone statue of his ancestors standing guard at the gates of Beacon Academy, Jaune could_ feel _the burst of shock and pain from Ren. He made a last attempt to stand, to do anything to get at the woman who had destroyed his team and killed his – his – Jaune still didn’t know exactly what Ren and Nora were to each other; maybe there just wasn’t a word for it. Ren pushed himself halfway up, one hand out and open, death hiding in the seemingly empty palm, Jaune knew. For just a single moment he remembered all the times Ren had surprised them, how much more powerful he truly was than he seemed to be, so much more than a tired teenager with a weapon that didn’t even change and an Aura stamina that was painfully short, but –_

 _Maybe at full strength, with all of Team JNPR at his back, Ren could have taken her. The solid Aura shields could have deflected the flames, and although Cinder was fast Ren was faster. Ren could_ vanish _, and no amount of fire could burn what was not there. But he was wounded, and Pyrrha was gone, and Nora was gone, and Jaune was as good as such, unable to even look away as Cinder, a venomous smile on her face, knelt down and touched a single pale fingertip to Ren’s heart._

_The green coat caught flame instantly, and within seconds Ren’s body was alight. There was no sound, no nothing, and the last initial of JNPR left not even a heap of ashes behind as he burned. Quiet, withdrawn, nearly shadow-like to Nora’s burning brilliance – Pyrrha left dust and a circlet, Nora left scorch marks and cracks furrowing deeply through the stones of the tower’s surface, but of Lie Ren there remained not a single trace._

_And then Cinder turned those gleaming, glowing, burning eyes on Jaune. He couldn’t back away, couldn’t run from her. Even if he hadn’t been frozen, he knew that he still would not have moved. Where was he going to go? Pyrrha had burned, Nora had exploded like a bomb going off, Ren had faded like smoke from a dying fire. JNPR was gone. There was nothing for Jaune to do but stand there like a martyr as Cinder, smiling like death, reached out towards him with a hand that glowed with searing light._

“Jaune. _Jaune_.” Ren was shaking him now, Nora staring at the two of them with wide eyes that almost glowed in the darkness.

Ren did not say _you're okay_. He didn’t say _it was just a dream_. He didn’t say _everything is all right_. He knew. They knew, more than anyone, how this felt. It wasn’t … it didn’t make it _okay_ , exactly, but it was comforting. The world had gone to hell, but he was not alone. He still had the two of them.

Ren did not bother speaking. He was a person of very few words at the best of times, and this was nowhere near the best of anything. He simply pulled Jaune closer to him and settled back into the bed. Nora pressed her body hard against Jaune’s other side, reaching out one hand to take Ren’s before going a rare kind of still and quiet.

There was no solution to all of this. There was no way to magically fix everything. Beacon was gone, and Pyrrha with it. They were alive and they were healing, but the dreams were not going to stop, maybe not ever. But the three of them could curl tighter together in this too-small bed in a house that was surprisingly quiet for having twelve people in it, and they could do their best to sleep. The sun would rise eventually.

*

_Ren_

Ren was still asleep when it started.

 _Danger_. He had to hide. Had to disappear, or the big bad would get him. There were a lot of big bads in the world, Ren had learned. Some had claws, some had fangs, some had blades or bullets or flames, but they were all terrifying monsters and he needed to _hide_.

 _Disappear_ , whispered a little voice deep inside him. _Vanish. They can’t hurt you if they can’t see you.  
_

Ren’s Semblance matched him perfectly. He was a background person by nature, a wallflower nobody ever noticed. That was good, that was how he liked it. The Semblance just… helped. When they had tested it, Nora had told him that he really did literally fade away, simply vanished from sight like smoke. It was like her eyes couldn’t stay on him, like there was nothing to see and so she could see nothing.

And, well. If it worked on Nora, it worked on everyone else. Everything else. That Semblance was probably a major reason he and Nora were still alive. The bad things – grimm, humans, everything – left them alone when they couldn’t see them. It was draining, to hide in plain sight like that, to use more than just his natural don’t-notice-me existence, but if it protected them it was worth it. Nora had been the first person he had used it on besides himself; the only person. There had never been anyone else to protect.

But the monster was coming, and Ren had to disappear. So he did.

As the Semblance flared, fading Ren away from the world, everything turned misty, cloaked. It was like looking out through one of his mother’s shawls, playing hide-and-seek as a child. But all the shawls had burned, and his mother was dead, and Ren was hiding from something far worse than a smiling, playful parent. It was coming for him, and he stayed frozen-still, waiting and hoping for it to go away. _Nothing here, nothing here, go away there’s nothing here. I’m not here._

 _I’m not here._ And he was not. Nothing was there. Nothing at all.

He didn’t know how long he waited. Time went funny when he was like this, faded, hiding. The danger was still there, somewhere, and so he stayed gone.

Until something broke through. Sound, like sight, was muffled when he faded. But this was a voice that had never failed to reach him, and so even though the world sounded like he was underwater, Nora’s voice was clear.

“Ren?” She sounded worried. “Ren, where are you? Come out, please.”

He couldn’t. It was still there, somewhere. Searching for him, looking for him. Cruel. Hungry. He couldn’t come out.

“Ren, please.” She sounded scared. Nora wasn’t ever scared, not by anything. She always looked the big bad right in the eyes and smiled as she crushed whatever was threatening her or Ren. Nora was brave. Ren was not.

“Ren,” came another voice. Not Nora. When was the last time he had ever cared about a voice that was not Nora? Mǔqīn, probably, and Fùqīn. But they were dead, and the dead did not speak. (Ren used to be so quiet (was still almost that quiet) that sometimes he would make himself speak, if only a few words, to make sure he wasn’t dead.)

_He would never hear Pyrrha’s voice again, either._

Pyrrha. Jaune-Nora-Pyrrha-Ren – JNPR. Pyrrha was gone, and Ren knew Nora, so –

Jaune. Jaune was speaking, sounding just as afraid as Nora. Where was he? Was he safe? Was the monster hunting Jaune, now that it could not find Ren? Loud, clumsy, awkward, brave, selfless Jaune, who knew next to nothing about Ren and Nora but cared about them anyway.

He couldn’t let that happen. Ren had to protect them. He had to help them. Nora was talking again, voice growing more desperate (she never did hide her fear well, the few times she was ever really afraid), and although he couldn’t see her through the shawl of hiding, he reached out and there she was.

Ren always knew where Nora was.

The fade spread over her too, drawing her into his mother’s shawl. _Hide, hide,_ he thought, and he couldn’t remember the last time he breathed. _Stay here with me, I’ll keep you safe, I’ll keep you hidden. The monsters can’t find us here._

Nora’s eyes widened, and she somehow simultaneously relaxed and tensed. “There you are,” she breathed, “I knew you were here.”

Ren almost smiled back. _But do the monsters know we’re here too?_ Where was Jaune? He wasn’t safe. They weren’t –

“It’s okay,” Nora murmured, pulling close to him. “It’s okay. We’re safe. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. We’re in Jaune’s house, and we’re safe.”

Safe. Was that something he could still feel? _Yes, with Nora. _  
__

And with Jaune. Ren couldn’t see him, could only hear his voice somewhere close by as his leader asked Nora if the two of them were okay with anxiety badly hidden in his voice.

“We’re okay,” Nora murmured. “Come on, Ren. It’s okay.”

They were alright. They were safe. Ren let out a breath, and let the shawl drop, like when the game ended when he’d been a child, and his mother had called him to come out for dinner. Ren and Nora faded back into real, standing in the middle of Jaune’s bedroom, where there were no monsters and the only light came from a distant moon.

The strain of using his Semblance for so long finally hit, and Ren sank down to sit on the edge of the bed, slumping against Nora as she held him.

“I'm glad you're back,” Jaune whispered, sitting on his other side as close as he could. Ren was too tired to respond, but he reached out with one hand and twined his fingers with his leader’s. He wasn’t scared anymore. The shadows were just shadows, here. Nora and Jaune seemed like they had been afraid of something, but they were both calming now too.

His teammates were talking above him, quiet words he couldn’t quite distinguish. Maybe about him, or whatever had frightened them. If it was important, they would tell him later. He could sleep now. He could sleep now, safe and surrounded by the people he cared about enough to come out of that safe shawl of not-being for. For these two, he could do anything.

Eventually Nora and Jaune’s words faded out, and the three of them slept, safe and real and together.

*

_Nora_

Nora opened her eyes to deep warm darkness, breathing in sharply and clenching her hands into fists to keep herself from screaming.

It was rare for her to wake quietly from a nightmare. Usually, she was the worst of all three of them – screaming, kicking, the works. Once she had even managed to wake up every single member of Jaune’s frankly gigantic family, even the one who slept really super deeply (Corinne? Nora still didn’t actually know all their names yet). But to wake up anywhere near quiet, especially so quiet that she hadn’t woken either Jaune or Ren, with both of them sleeping so close, sharing the bed with her – that was truly uncommon. Jaune usually slept pretty deeply (and also snored), so that wasn’t terribly surprising, but Ren? Ren could have slept through a hurricane, unless Nora was reacting to it. Anything to do with her and he was awake in an instant. Most of the time, if so much as her breathing changed, he would wake and check on her. If she rolled over, his eyes would open. If she dreamed – he woke her, or let her sleep on. He always knew.

But he and Jaune had been practicing Aura control yesterday, and the exertion plus still healing from the Battle of Beacon plus the general overhanging exhaustion that they had long ago just accepted was a part of Ren – yeah, Nora wasn’t too surprised that he hadn’t woken up.

Also, he was sleeping farther away from her than usual. Jaune was in the middle tonight, flat on his back and snorting softly to himself as he dreamed about something not-awful for once. Ren was pressed close against him all along their sides, his head on the team leader’s shoulder, close enough to feel him breathe, sense his heart beating in his chest. Nora knew, it was how Ren made sure that the people he was with were still alive, still there. She did the same thing. At least, she did the same thing when she was sleeping, which she was currently not doing.

Nora couldn’t quite remember what she had been dreaming about. Considering how she had just woken up, that was probably a good thing.

The pieces she could remember – darkness, screaming, the smell of blood, something burning, flashes of teeth and too-big claws, deep snarls coming from unseen sources, angry red eyes glowing in the shadows – were, unfortunately, things that could just easily have come from a number of events in Nora’s life. _Sorry, subconscious,_ she thought sarcastically and a little bitterly, _I’m gonna need a few more details to know specifically what traumatic, life-altering event you’re talking about. We have a few to choose from here, you see._

Maybe it was good that she couldn’t remember everything, this time. It was worse, sometimes. Sometimes she would see her parents dying, her home burning. Beacon falling. Real things, things that had really happened. Those hurt.

Or maybe she would see Pyrrha. Nora didn’t really know how she had died. There had been a tower, and the fire-eyed woman Cinder, and a huge dragon-thing grimm and something about Maidens. All that Nora really knew was that Pyrrha had gone away and not come back, just like Nora’s mother and father. Gone off to fight the monsters, and lost the fight. The not-knowing didn’t stop Nora’s brain from making up endings to her teammate’s story, though, and each was worse than the last.

Maybe it would be Jaune in her dreams. Jaune could be kind of lame, but something in Nora was just so relieved to have a leader, to have someone in charge, no matter how awkward he was or how inexperienced. Jaune was the leader. Jaune would protect them. And he had, hadn’t he? After the fall of Beacon, as Nora and Ren were sitting in the wreckage trying to figure out how to get to Umbra Academy and hoping that the teachers would let them work in exchange for someplace that was sort of safe to stay, Jaune had come out of nowhere and whisked them away to his own family’s house. Big, safe, warm, full of people who weren’t _Nora’s_ family, but were family nonetheless – something Nora had grown very unused to. A lot of people, all of whom cared about Nora and Ren even though they had never met them. It had been safe, and they had been able to heal and recover somewhere where they could actually relax and focus on getting better instead of just trying to stay alive. It had been somewhere where they could all be together, the cracked and battered pieces of what had once, for a short and brilliant time, been Team JNPR.

But in Nora’s dreams, none of that happened. In her dreams, Jaune died at Beacon, torn apart by beowolves or gone to the top of the tower with Pyrrha, the two of them burning together. Or maybe he lived, but went home alone. Maybe he was too deep in mourning for his partner, or maybe he just didn’t want to bring the two still-sort-of-strangers that had made up the other half of his team to his own house. No matter the reason, those were the dreams that hurt the most. Being at the Arc house still felt like a dream, to be honest. It wasn’t her home, but Nora hadn’t been in a home of any kind for so long that everything felt new and exciting and maybe more than a little bit frightening. But she had her team with her, had Ren and Jaune at her side, and with them she could do anything.

Not in the dreams, though. In the dreams, Jaune died, or he left, but the results were the same. She and Ren were left alone. Those were the worst kind of dreams.

Or maybe the worst ones were the ones where Ren died. Nora had been having those for years, of course – her worst fear, surfacing time and time again as she slept – but the Battle of Beacon had just given her nightmares more fuel. Too many close calls, through all their lives. Losing Pyrrha had hurt, had hurt deeply and would maybe never ever really heal, but Nora knew that losing Ren would kill her. Losing Ren would be the end of the world, for real. Even in her dreams, the events were blurry, fogged like even the worst dark corners of her subconscious could not bear to create a clear death scene for the other half of her soul. If Ren died, Nora would die too. She just knew it, in her bones, in her heart.

So she just wouldn’t let it happen. Nora fought like a wild ursa because that was how her mother had fought, yes, but she also fought because she wasn’t going to let anything happen to Ren, not on her life. Because her life depended on it.

It didn’t really matter what the dream had been about. It had just been that. A dream. If it had been a real part of her life, it was past and Nora could do nothing about it. If it had been a dream event, it wasn’t real and she wasn’t going to worry about it. She hadn’t even woken her bed mates, so all she had to do was go back to sleep and pretend that nothing had ever happened.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. Whatever Nora had dreamt, real or not, long-past or just recent, it had been a bad one. But she still didn’t want to wake her team up. Jaune worried too much, trying to do everything at once, and Ren was always so tired, so drained. She couldn’t wake them up just because she couldn’t fall back asleep on her own.

So she curled up closer against Jaune’s body, pressing herself close against him. Mumbling something about waffles and little sisters, Jaune wrapped an arm around her, still sound asleep. His fingers tickled against Nora’s side but she held in her giggles until her leader settled back down again, grumbling now about blueberries and letting out a terrific snort before quieting at last. With her free hand, Nora reached across Jaune’s chest to link her fingers with Ren’s. She held her breath as he stirred at the contact, but he settled too, perhaps lulled by the knowledge, skin deep, that it was Nora.

Nora let out her breath and closed her eyes. She could hear Jaune’s heart beating, close and strong beneath her ear. She could feel Ren’s pulse, light and steady. She was always going to have dreams. Her life left no other option. But she had these two, close as blood to her heart. She was never alone.

Listening to the _thud-thud, thud-thud_ of Jaune’s heart and counting the pattern of Ren’s pulse, Nora drifted, and at last, slept.

The dreams did not return.

* * *

* * *

Jaune had been intending to go to Orianne’s room – his sister wanted to ask him some questions for something she was writing, probably about grimm – when he overheard his teammate’s voices through the door of his room. He didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but what he heard froze him, heart and body.

“What if we’re cursed?”

Just like that, Jaune’s original plan was gone. Nora’s voice was… quiet, fragile in a way that Nora Valkyrie _never_ was. He didn’t move, listening to his closest friends even though part of him shouted to move on, to leave them to their conversation in private. But he couldn’t go.

Jaune had hoped that Ren would respond, would deny his partner’s question. Instead the silence hung heavy, without Ren’s sensible words restoring reason.

As if she couldn’t stand the quiet, Nora continued. “I mean, at least we had a couple of years at Umbra, but what if that was a fluke? The… the, the outlier? I mean, there was home, and then,” her voice jerked a little, “then all the time after, then Beacon – how many times does it take until it’s not coincidence anymore? We keep – it keeps happening. Grimm follow fear and bad feelings, but what if they follow us too, somehow? What if it’s vus?” There was a moment of pause, then Nora’s voice blurted out, sharp like she couldn’t hold it in, “Ren, what if we bring it here, too? What if we hurt Jaune’s family just because we _are?_ We –”

Jaune had heard enough. He wasn’t supposed to be listening, but here he was and he could not allow this to continue. He couldn’t let his teammates suffer like this, thinking themselves the cause of all the things that had happened to them.

When he shoved the door open, Nora froze like the prey animal she never was and Ren full-body twitched, as if he’d had to physically restrain himself from lunging for StormFlower at the sound of Jaune’s surprise arrival.

“You’re not,” Jaune blurted. The two stared at him, and he barreled on. “You’re not cursed.

“A lot of bad things have happened to you. Really terrible things, things I can’t ever begin to imagine. They happened, but they weren’t your fault. I don’t know why grimm came to your village, and I don’t know why nobody ever tried to help you after. I’m so sorry you had to live like that for so long. I’m so glad Umbra Academy took you in, and even happier that you both came to Beacon and that I got to be part of your team.”

They were really staring now. Jaune knew, felt it somehow, that if he messed this up, whatever was happening between them would shatter and they would never find all the pieces again. He couldn’t fail them now.

“Beacon was not your fault. It was the White Fang, and –” his voice almost cracked, “and Cinder, and plans and plots that were _way_ beyond the control of a bunch of teenagers. Beacon was terrible, but _it was not your fault."_

Now he was moving, and his teammates were looking like they were made out of glass. Jaune knelt where the remainder of his team sat on his bed, reaching out, uncertain of reception of touch. He needn’t have worried; almost instantly they both reached back, both of Nora’s hands cold and tight wrapped around his, Ren’s warm like pale sunlight and touching like it too, like he could vanish at the slightest movement.

“You’re not cursed,” Jaune murmured. “Bad things happen, but they’re not your fault. We’ll come back from this, like you came back from everything else. You’re not alone. We’ll be okay. You are not cursed.”

Jaune had never seen any of his teammates cry. Pyrrha was – had been – strong and steady, always keeping her emotions in balance. Ren was like that too, just more… severely. Whether it was because of his past or his general state of constant exhaustion or simply just his personality, the pseudo-ninja rarely showed any emotion, much less an excess like crying. And Nora, despite being the single most energetic person Jaune had ever met, was surprisingly silent about serious feelings, and hardly ever seemed to be sad or upset about anything, at least externally.

Jaune had never seen anyone on his team cry, and now Nora burst into tears, and Ren’s face grew wet almost instantly, and he, who was the leader, who had grown up with about a million sisters about half of whom would cry on a regular basis for any number of reasons, had no idea what to do.

So he did the only thing he could, and wrapped his arms around what remained of his team. Ren tipped forward almost alarmingly, pressing his face into Jaune’s neck as if he was trying to hide from everything that had ever happened to him and Nora. Nora clung like a sloth, her fingers digging almost painfully into Jaune’s back, but it didn’t matter. He would have done anything to make his friends not hurt like this.

But there was nothing that could be done, not really, so he just sat there and held them. Jaune didn’t know why bad things happened, or why so many bad things had happened to his teammates. He couldn’t fix problems or heal pasts. He was just Jaune, just a teenager leading a group made up of a few other teenagers, fighting all the monsters in the world. He couldn’t do anything else, so he was just going to have to do what he could, here, now.

It seemed to be enough for Ren and Nora. It would be enough for him. Neither seemed inclined to move from the tangle the three were lying in, and he felt the same. They were not cursed, and he would not leave them. JNPR would be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ow. that was bumpy, and it didn't help that i had to rewrite ren's scene twice in a half-hearted attempt to follow just a bit more of canon. but it's done, and things should be mostly downhill from here i hope. 
> 
> i am going to do my darndest to bang out the rest of this as fast as i possibly can while not ruining everything, and now that the semester is over i should actually be able to get some writing done. thank you for sticking out the wait, and i hope to be back again soon with more, less-sad stuff!


	6. Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it passes anyway and so does the storm. JNPR heals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why oh why is this fic so hard to write??? i’m having to drag myself through writing this, which makes no sense because i love it and i love jnpr. it’s very strange and very irritating. i don’t like it. so if this chapter (… and all the other ones…) read kind of weirdly, i apologize. i was just desperate to get something written and posted. unfortunately, i had to write all 3 remaining chapters in at least some haphazard form to make sure i didn’t bungle anything, which is why this took so damn long. also i have had no internet for the past five days. ugh. the last two chapters will be up soon, once i give them a quick edit for more bungle-prevention. 
> 
> this chapter is very weird, mostly because two-thirds of it is basically just summary-style trying to get through everything. it’s unfortunate, but i ended up coming to the conclusion that if i tried to write everything out in better detail it would take me another year just to get one chapter up so i gave it up for lost. things had to get done, so this chapter is practically just notes i am sorry. 
> 
> i feel very lost and tired and just want to get this done because i like it so much but it’s now stressing me out and i just want to feel finished.

JNR had been living at the Arc house for almost four months. It had felt like they would never heal, never recover from Beacon, but here they were, still standing. More scars, both on bodies and in minds, but they weren’t dead.

Jaune had taken almost no damage during the Battle of Beacon. He’d been with Pyrrha and Ozpin, and then only Pyrrha, and then there had been the tower and the rocket locker and by the time he got himself out of that, Beacon was burning and the Hunters were all but retreating. Bruises, cuts, and scratches were all he’d sustained, standing there watching fighters drag themselves past him painted red with their and others’ blood, if they could walk at all. Many had to be carried, and far too many others were beyond any help. The grimm had torn Beacon apart.

By the time Jaune had found what was left of his team, they had been in pretty bad shape. Ren had burned through every drop of Aura he’d had, and his coat and pants had been heavily slashed by grimm claws. Nora had been wrapped in bandages from shoulders to hips, her armor twisted and ripped from the claws of an ursa that had gotten far too close. Ren could barely walk and had stopped talking or reacting to anything, struggling to process losing his world yet again. Nora had probably lost far more blood than she would ever admit, and was in the most high-strung fight-or-flight mode Jaune had ever seen, regardless of the fact that she swayed just by standing.

Jaune had known enough about their past that this must have seemed like the worst kind of déjà vu. He wasn’t sure he would have made it, in their place.

But they had. Jaune had found them, and taken them to the only safe place Jaune could think of. Home.

They had made it. Now, when Jaune jolted awake from nightmares of Beacon or Pyrrha or any of the hundred other things he dreamed of nowadays, he could remember that he was home. His family was all around him, and so were Nora and Ren. They were alright.

Jaune’s sister Corinne had been in medical training for a few years, but Jaune still felt a bit bad that for a few weeks, every time she came home from work – even trainees were needed at the hospitals now, with all the grimm attacks – she was right back to working again, this time on his teammates.

She’d done a good job. Even Jaune had gotten a checkover, despite his protests that he was fine. She’d wrapped Ren’s ankle, bandaged Nora’s waist, treated the Aura burnout and the minor concussion, all without commenting on the marks of events far older than Beacon. Ren’s injured shoulder was clearly a recent wound on top of something much older that had never truly healed, and Nora had more scars than most Huntresses her age had reason to. _Ferocious, even before she wielded Magnhild._

That first night had only been the start. The marks on Jaune’s skin had faded within a week, but now even Nora’s side was nothing more than raised pink lines, joining others that Jaune didn’t know the origin of and would never ask. If Nora wanted to share those stories she would; Jaune would never push her, or Ren. Ren’s left shoulder was as good as it was going to get, according to Corinne’s medical semi-expertise. There had been nobody to treat it the first time, and the second injury on top of the old had done it no courtesies. But it was better, at least a little, and Ren seemed to be back to normal as well.

Bodies healed easily enough, with care. Minds were a little trickier.

The nightmares would probably never stop. Jaune had talked with Corinne about sleep and science and medicine, but before that he had gone to his father. Jacques had confessed to his son that he still sometimes saw Roue in his dreams, even all these years later. But he had also said that many more dreams held his wife Isabel and their beloved children, or his old Hunting partner Catherine. Even Michael, their distant leader, sometimes appeared in sleep. They had been good friends once upon a time. Roue, too, would sometimes appear – not blank-eyed and bloody as she did in the nightmares, but liquid and smiling, always looking like she was in a dream of her own. Looking as she had before the beowolf.

Someday, Jaune hoped that he’d be able to think of Pyrrha and not see fire. That one day, she would walk into his dreams not bloodstained and burning, but shining the way she always had before, ready to train or Hunt or go downtown with Nora or sit in the gardens with Ren. For her to look at him like a friend and leader, for her eyes to glitter with the confidence and contentment that JNPR had put there, waiting for the next adventure. Someday.

JNR talked about her now, sometimes. It still hurt – it would always hurt – but now they could. She had been a part of them; she would never quite be gone. Pyrrha Nikos did not fade easily, and they would never stop loving her.

One day, Jaune went to the pack that he had carried from Beacon and dug all the way to the bottom. From a bundle of torn red fabric, he drew out a battered band of bronze-colored metal.

Nora nearly struck him. Ren just sat there, as still as stone and as fragile as glass.

_Where did you get it._

_How did you have it._

_Why didn’t you tell us._

_Why –_

He hastily explained, ignoring the cracking of his voice every other word. How Ruby’s uncle had found him in the aftermath of Beacon, the look in his eyes as he’d passed over the circlet, the words that everyone knew were empty but had to be said anyway.

Jaune had already known, of course. There is a feeling one gets, when a partner is killed. It’s unexplainable but unmistakable. Though they hadn’t spoken about it until later, Ren and Nora had known too.

The Undefeatable Girl was gone, and all that remained was her circlet.

Looking at that battered ring of metal seemed to loosen something within all three of them. Unprompted, Ren noted how sometimes Pyrrha would get him to help her tie her hair up in its trademark ponytail. Her hair was longer than his and thicker, curling more, but he figured it out quickly and became even better than Pyrrha at preventing bumps and escaped wisps. She still struggled to ask for even something as simple as help with her hair, too used to having to be perfect and responsible for herself, but it had been a start. Ren didn’t say what it had been a start to, but Jaune and Nora knew that the quieter half of their team had already made a good pair even with the short amount of time they’d had. They mourned with Ren the loss of what could have been.

Nora mentioned that she’d loved training against Pyrrha, more than she’d ever enjoyed practice with anyone. Pyrrha, she explained, was strong enough that Nora could go all-out. With everyone else, she had to restrain herself, be careful that she didn’t actually crush someone she was supposed to be working with. Of course, when it was a real fight against real grimm she could do anything, but having to hold back the rest of the time meant she couldn’t practice being the best fighter she could be. The other children at Umbra weren’t able to match her, and neither could most of the students at Beacon, not with her sheer raw power. Not even Ren could help with this. The two of them made a fantastic team for the exact reason he couldn’t help her become stronger: they were opposites in combat. Ren was made to evade hits, not take them, and Nora was not built for agility.

In the Golden Girl, however, Nora had finally found her match. Pyrrha dodged most blows, of course, but Akoúo̱ was just as much a part of her fighting style as Miló and could even block a direct hit from Magnhild. Pyrrha was fast, and gave back as good as she got. Nora had been ecstatic. Yang Xiao Long had also been a good training partner (although after those two went at it, there wasn’t usually much left) but Pyrrha was on Nora’s team. Pyrrha also had extensive formal training and was both willing to share it and a good teacher. They were a good match, and Nora had loved it.

Losing Pyrrha had hit Ren and Nora hard, maybe even harder than it had hit Jaune, and he’d been her partner. Nora and Ren, though, had only just started learning how to trust other people again. They had been cautious but wanting, and Jaune and Pyrrha had been a good pair for them. The two had started to open up – Jaune and Pyrrha as well, in different ways – but then Beacon had burned and JNPR had shattered.

Jaune couldn’t help but be amazed, though. It would have been completely understandable for Nora and Ren to close themselves up permanantly after such a loss, so soon after they had finally allowed themselves to bond with other people, but instead they had held on to Jaune all the tighter. He’d never had a connection to another person the way he did with Ren and Nora. Not even his relationship with his sister Antoinette came close to this. Jaune was a part of the two of them now, incredible though it seemed at times. They were bound to him as well as to each other, now. Each relationship was different, but a common thread ran through all three.

JNPR had taken a heavy loss, one from which it would never fully recover. But they were putting the pieces back together, and a new team, changed but still strong, was emerging. Nothing would ever be the same again, but that didn’t mean everything was over. Somehow, they could come back from this.

Jaune thought Pyrrha would be proud.

* * *

Strangely enough, perhaps one of the hardest parts of living in the Arc house for the almost four months that JNR stayed there was actually _living_ there. It was Jaune’s home, but he had been away at Beacon for a year. He had changed. His family had changed.

Antoinette had sunk deeper and deeper into her Dust research, spreading papers and books and notes like an oil slick throughout the house. Jacques’s study now belonged mostly to his daughter, although that didn’t stop the tide of Dust materials across the other rooms of the house as well. Orianne had grown at once more intense and more defensive about her interest in grimm research, which had sparked more than one conflict during her university studies. Fleur and Nicolette were trying, almost too hard, to not be just “one of the Arc twins,” but this was causing strife within their relationship. Fleur was growing more introverted, almost antisocial, and Nicolette was having trouble in school. Marie was angry at her hero big brother for leaving her behind when he went to Beacon, and was acting out because of it. Corinne had been hastily upgraded to a higher-level nursing position (nevermind the fact that she was still technically in training) because of the Battle of Beacon. Camille was working more too – many Hunter’s weapons had been damaged in the battle, and she was still working on the backlog from the incident in Mountain Vale from last semester. Jacques was at once trying to keep working hard at his job and take care of his family, and Isabelle had her hands full with keeping the whole mountain balanced and not falling down, as always. Her son had taken off to be a big brave warrior, and she worried about him even as she strove to care for the rest of the family still at home.

And here was Jaune. He had lied his way into Beacon and somehow been made a team leader (he was certain that Ozpin knew, and was still trying to figure out why he hadn’t been kicked out). He’d essentially run away from home, taking with him the family heirloom weapon, and had barely told his family anything for nearly the entire first semester at Beacon. Even after, he’d been pretty bad at communicating with his parents, and had been even worse at it with his sisters.

The newfound Beacon team had been made up of one all-but-superheroine something-famous professional warrior and two mostly-feral not-quite-siblings who were at once too quiet and too loud. And it wasn’t like Jaune was any kind of stellar leader or anything. In all honesty, they had been a little bit of a disaster, at least at the beginning. And then somehow, all those awkward pieces had clicked and Jaune-and-Nora-and-Pyrrha-and-Ren had become Team JNPR. It had been amazing.

And then it had been gone. Pyrrha had kissed him (that was still something to be contended with, and Jaune wasn’t sure it would ever really feel real) and shut him in a rocket locker, and then she had died. The rest of Beacon had nearly followed. Jaune had dug what remained of his team from the ashes and dragged them all, limping and bedraggled, back to the only safe place he knew.

The universe must think he was something special to be protected at all costs. That was the only explanation. It was the only way he could have made it through Beacon, survived the battle, and been _welcomed_ back to the home he had all but run away from nearly a year before. And not just him, too – him, and the two seriously injured and severely shaken-up team members he had left.

Apparently, getting home had been the easy part. Because JNPR was safe and Jaune was home, but he had apparently forgotten how to live in the same house as his seven sisters, and it wasn’t like Ren and Nora had much experience living in a house at all, much less one shared with nine other people. It could have gone worse, he supposed. Nora settled in around the sisters with only a minimal amount of teeth-baring, mostly at Orianne until they bonded over grimm, weirdly enough. Ren was polite if a little closed-off, but the family took it easily and Jaune probably only noticed it because he was one of the few that Ren was open with at all. The three of them were already used to sharing close quarters, at least, so that wasn’t a problem. It had been a little awkward to explain to his parents that yes, he needed to be in the same room as his two male-and-female teammates, but some explanations about how they felt and the security in being together, plus a bit of Ren and Nora’s background, and they had accepted that as well.

Isabelle had been gracious in accommodating two new people in her household, but required Jaune to get back into the chore schedule. He would be followed by Nora and Ren as soon as they were cleared by Corinne. Ren was almost immediately welcomed into the kitchen, and Nora turned out to be very good at fixing anything mechanical. Jaune began his old chores with hardly a complaint – after all, what could he whine about? Difficulties or no, this was as good as it could get for them.

The bumps were almost nothing, in the end. It was weird for Jaune to be back in his childhood home, and clearly both strange and a bit painful for Ren and Nora to live with a family again, but it was also good. The Arcs did not try to replace the memories the two had of their own families. Isabelle taught Ren everything she could about cooking, and he soaked it up like a sponge, having never had the opportunity to learn from someone else before. Nora and Jaune liked to listen to Jaune’s father tell stories about his Hunting days, and Nora quickly developed just as much of a hero-worship complex for Jacques’s old partner Catherine as Jaune had.

Maybe best of all was how Jaune’s sister Camille reacted to JNR. Camille had been a weapons designer for years, having shown a gift for it early on, and she seemed over the moon about her little brother’s team. She knew Crocea Mors by heart, of course, but Nora and Ren had perhaps the most different pair of weapons she had ever seen. Both had ranged and melee capabilities – Magnhild’s grenade launcher and Stormflower’s bullets switching into a warhammer and short blades – but they were more interesting than that. Nora and Ren had grown up together and made their own weapons: Nora’s a combination of the Hunting tools of her parents, powerful and heavy-hitting; Ren’s simple but deadly, not even needing to change shape to accomplish their task. The set made an amazing and diverse set that worked together flawlessly. Camille found her brother’s team fascinating, both the people and the weapons. Jaune decided that if he ever had the opportunity, he would introduce his sister to Ruby Rose, then sit back and watch the sparks fly.

Jaune thought about Ruby a lot. She had been his first friend at Beacon, even before he had ever met Pyrrha or Nora or Ren. Her uncle had told him that he thought she’d probably seen Pyrrha die. He knew that her sister had been seriously wounded, and that Blake had bolted after the battle, and that Weiss had vanished back to Atlas. Part of him was unreasonably mad at Ruby – at least her partner was still alive – but he couldn’t find it in him. Ruby had been friends with Pyrrha too. And just because Weiss wasn’t dead didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt for her to not be there. He was thinking of writing to Ruby soon, now that his team was safe and healing.

Jaune talked to his sisters more, now that he was home. Sometimes he wished more than anything that Pyrrha was still here, if only to be able to talk with Camille about weapons and detail grimm to Orianne, to tell stories to the twins and ask Jaune’s father about his experiences Hunting. It hurt, to think about what could have been, but it was helped by what there still was. Marie was still mad that she couldn’t go with Jaune to Beacon, but she didn’t seem to begrudge him too much for it now as long as he told her as many stories as she could sit still for. He was still her favorite, but Nora might be rapidly replacing him in the hero-worship category. Jaune couldn’t find any displeasure in that – Nora was pretty darn awesome, and she told stories even better than Jaune did. He was able to sit with Orianne again, neither of them talking as Jaune read and Orianne drew. It was the best quiet Jaune had ever known, seconded only by the memories of doing homework side-by-side with Pyrrha. The twins would badger him into working with them on whatever new project they had going (and blame him for the resulting mess, as always), and Antoinette was always there to listen if Jaune needed to talk about JNPR to someone who hadn’t been a part of JNPR. Jaune loved all of his sisters, but there was something about his half-sister, his oldest sister, the one who knew all his secrets and didn’t judge him for a single one, that made him understand how close Ruby and Yang were. He couldn’t imagine being a Hunter with Antoinette at his side. It would have been amazing, it would have changed his life.

(It would have meant that JNPR would have never formed, and for that reason only, he was glad Antoinette had chosen not to be a Huntress.)

* * *

Sometimes, Isabelle and Jacques couldn’t quite believe the last few months. Life had been normal – or at least, as normal as life in the Arc family got – and then the news had announced that Beacon Academy had fallen, that the White Fang was on the offense, that grimm were running loose, that there had been casualties.

Communications had been mostly down. Universities had closed, so Antoinette and Orianne had come home. Schools had been suspended or outright shut down, so Fleur and Nicolette and Marie had stayed at the house every day. On the other hand, Corinne’s medical work now kept her at the hospital almost constantly, and Camille was always responding to inquiries about weapons repair and redesign. Jacques was managing nearly the same, working on coordinating teams of Hunters and answering questions about Hunting strategy and grimm control. Just because he wasn’t an active Hunter didn’t mean he couldn’t help. Isabelle couldn’t count how many times she had fallen asleep to the sound of her husband muttering to himself about beowolves and containment and taijitu and stealth Hunting.

Isabelle wasn’t a Huntress, but she had married Jacques when he was still an active hunter. He’d already been Hunting less, with newborn Antoinette to care for, and he officially quit just after Corinne’s birth. It had been a little surprising that with such a heritage from their father’s side, none of her children had exhibited an interest in Hunting. At least, that had been the case right up until Jaune somehow got into Beacon despite his abysmal scores, took Crocea Mors, and left. Despite their displeasure at the sneaking, Isabelle and Jacques had been proud of her son. But the pride had dissolved into directionless panic at the news of the Fall of Beacon.

Their boy’s return was the most joyous day in recent memory. The discovery that he had brought his team with him had been unexpected but manageable, at least until they realized that where there should have been three behind Jaune, there were only two. That night Isabelle had held Jacques through his memories of Roue, and in the morning they had talked. Jaune’s teammates would be welcome in the Arc house for as long as they needed to stay. It wasn’t even a question.

Jacques had seen what happened to children of grimm attacks, and Isabelle was more intuitive than most. They could tell that their son’s new friends had not led easy lives, but they could also tell that the two cared deeply about Jaune, and that he felt the same for them. Jacques told Jaune about Roue, and Isabelle began cooking with Ren once she learned how interested he was, and how skilled despite admitting to having no real training. That could be easily remedied.

Although they were clearly inexperienced and more than a little uncomfortable at living in a house with many other people, Ren and Nora were good houseguests and helped wherever they could. Even if they had done nothing, just seeing the way Jaune’s face lit up whenever Nora walked into the room, or how easily he talked with Ren, or how they would all sit so close whenever they were all together, was enough. Neither Isabelle nor Jacques regretted that split-second decision to allow two strange children to live with them.

It wouldn’t be forever. Jacques knew his son. Jaune wouldn’t be able to stay home forever. The same part of him that had driven him to Beacon would lead him out again, and Ren and Nora would follow. Isabelle didn’t want her boy to leave again, but she knew he had to. It was who he was. At least he would be in good hands.

JNR had burst into the Arcs’ lives without warning. They had settled in surprisingly well, and the sisters were all very happy to have their brother back and were welcoming to his new friends as well. Soon enough, though, they would leave again. Jacques knew Hunters, and Isabelle knew people. The Arc house would always be a safe resting place, but these three still had work to do.

* * *

Jaune woke up early one morning to discover that the bed felt a little bigger. He rolled over, puzzled and still half asleep, and realized that although Nora was still snoring lightly beside him, Ren’s spot was empty and cold.

As he got up, tugging a sweater over his t-shirt – it had gotten cold recently, although the weather would probably warm back up again soon since it wasn’t quite time for a seasonal shift yet – Jaune tried to keep himself calm. Ren was probably just getting water, or wanted an early breakfast before the chaos of twelve people trying to eat at once started, or any of a million other reasons for him to not be in the bed. But Ren was inherently a lazy person, and that compounded by his Aura drain and general exhaustion meant that he was rarely the first one up – rarely anything but the last one up, actually. And too much had happened too recently for any of the remains of Team JNPR to be comfortable outside of each other’s range of sight.

For Ren to have disappeared like that … Jaune tried to keep himself from panicking. _You’re being irrational,_ he told himself, but he couldn’t help but remember the last time someone had disappeared from him. The memory of Pyrrha’s face the moment before she slammed the rocket locker door shut took over him for a moment, and he had to lean against a wall, breathing carefully and slowly, before it faded.

He was really starting to freak out by the time he found the team ninja. He had been passing through the living room, on his way to the kitchen to check it again, when he happened to glance out of the window and spot him.

Ren was dressed in gray pants that were almost certainly Jaune’s and what had once been his long black undershirt, sleeveless now after the damage it had received in the Battle of Beacon. His hands were empty, StormFlower still at the foot of Jaune’s bed, and he was moving.

The motions, flowing and smooth, seemed familiar to Jaune, and he was suddenly struck with another memory, just as hard but a little less painful this time.

_He was sitting in one of Beacon’s courtyards, basking in the new spring sunlight. Nora was sprawled out on the grass beside him, working on an essay for Goodwitch. He wasn’t done with his either, but for now he wasn’t writing it. Instead, he watched the other half of his team move in strange concerted movements, like a bizarre dance._

_They could almost be doing combat moves, dragged down to a honey-slow speed, drifting. But he knew his teammates, knew their bodies and what they were capable of, and he was well aware that although they may be moving slowly, each and every movement was perfectly controlled and carried just as much power as if they had been in battle, moving at lightning speed._

_Jaune couldn’t do half of what they did, but he was content to just watch, seeing how Ren’s weight shifted as he moved, the way Pyrrha controlled even her breathing perfectly, keeping every movement under flawless control._

_They were beautiful._

Ren stopped, his body frozen completely still, and the abrupt cessation of flow snapped Jaune back to here and now. At first, he thought that Ren had noticed him and stopped because of that, but a moment later he was proven wrong.

Ren was only still for a moment before he began to move again. But this time, there were none of the slow, smooth, steady movements from only minutes before. This time everything was fast, sharp, dangerous. There were no weapons in the boy’s hands, but Jaune knew better than almost anyone else that Ren didn’t need a weapon to be deadly.

But this – this wasn’t normal. This was strange, even for Ren, even after everything that they had been through. Ren didn’t fight like this. Ren fought like he moved, smooth and even and calculated and clean. Not like this. This was too sharp, jerky. Painful.

That thought was what finally spurred Jaune into action. He pushed the door into the yard open, making sure to move with enough noise that he wouldn’t catch his teammate off guard. “Ren,” he said, loud enough to be noticed but not too loud to frighten.

It was a good thing that he had intervened when he did. Jaune didn’t know how long Ren had been out here, but even with that short amount of combat-speed movement, he was breathing hard, slightly paler than usual.

“Ren,” Jaune said, and found himself suddenly wishing that Nora was out here with him, because there was pain in those pink eyes the level of which was rarely seen in Ren’s calm steady façade.

“We need to start training again,” Ren said, and they both pretended to not hear the shakiness in his voice. “This – all of this,” he gestured vaguely, almost wildly, at the Arc house, “it isn’t going to last forever. We need to be ready, we need to be ready to leave, be able to leave –”

Jaune cut him off, grabbing both of his hands and holding them gently in his own. “Ren. Ren, listen to me. It’s okay. This will last. If you want to start training again, we can. I never thought I would ever miss Goodwitch’s practice drills, but I guess miracles do happen.” He gave his teammate a little smile. “I’m happy to train with you, Ren. But I don’t want you doing this alone. You’re still healing – we all are, and you won’t do anyone any good hurting yourself more out here on your own.” He channeled his Leader Voice™ for a moment. “We’ll start training again this afternoon. But for now,” he started walking backwards, tugging Ren along with him, “let’s go eat some breakfast. Nora kicks even worse when you’re not there to make her stop, and I’m hungry.”

Ren followed his leader without protest, and Jaune took it as a victory when he saw that the pain had mostly lifted from his eyes. It was still there, the way it was in all of them, but it had subsided once again.

They would make it, together. Training would bring back a semblance of normalcy for Team JNPR, and as long as they took it easy until everyone was fully healed, it would probably help them focus and recover. Ren had been right about one thing. They couldn’t stay here forever. Well, they could – Jaune’s family would probably let them do whatever they wanted – but all three of them were Hunters. They were needed. And they wanted to do what they did.

But for now, it was time for some breakfast. Jaune hoped Nora wouldn’t mind if he ate most of the strawberries.

* * *

That got them started. Up until then, they had been healing, recovering, grieving. They could not train, neither physically nor mentally. Now, though, Nora was no longer limping, and Ren had as much mobility with his bad shoulder as he had before Beacon fell. Her strength had returned, and so had his. Jaune hadn’t sustained any serious injuries during the battle, but his cuts and bruises had healed and his heart hurt just a little bit less when he thought of his partner. They were ready.

A new morning found Jaune and Nora together in the backyard, Ren still asleep and the house quiet. Only Isabelle and Corinne were up, working together in the kitchen to make some kind of cake, and it was also entirely possible that Antoinette had never gone to bed last night.

Because she was – had been – so busy, Pyrrha had made training videos for Jaune, so he could keep practicing even when she was away doing other things. He hadn’t looked at them since leaving Beacon, pain and guilt and sadness keeping him from even opening the files. She was _gone._ How could he look at her face, listen to her voice, and just _train?_ How could he keep going?

It turned out that he wasn’t alone. One afternoon while Ren was outside meditating, Nora had crawled onto the bed as Jaune was reading and confessed to him, in bare whispers, that Pyrrha had made videos for her, too. They didn’t use anything like the same style of weapons, but then again, Pyrrha’s Miló took a very different form of sword than Jaune’s Crocea Mors and she used Akoúo̱ in a completely different style than he handled his shield. Pyrrha was – _had been_ – the Invincible Girl, there wasn’t a weapon she didn’t know. And her general training would always be of use to Nora, who had received essentially no training at all until a handful of years ago.

Jaune had confessed right back to her, and they had almost been able to laugh at it – their perfect-student, unbeatable-fighter, stellar-human-being teammate, recording herself giving instructions on foot placement and shieldwork and weight shifting and force-of-strike so that her klutz of a leader and wild-child of a friend could get better at combat.

Pyrrha would have done anything for them. Record videos, spend extra training time, learn new techniques, be a sparring partner – she gave all she had for the team. She’d had few friends, they knew that, and she valued the members of JNPR like nothing she had ever known before. They had felt the same way. They still did.

Pyrrha was gone, but they were not. Nora gazed at the tiny frozen picture for a moment longer: her friend standing tall and strong, armor shining and hair blazing, a smile on her face as she prepared to instruct.

This one was on shield placement, the proper stance and the ways to take a strike without hurting yourself – how to use a shield as a shield. Harder than it sounded, apparently. Nora wouldn’t know; her strategy was to hit so hard that a shield was useless. Grimm didn’t use shields anyway. So she sat and managed the play/pause on the video, watching Jaune follow his partner’s instructions on bracing, positioning, moving into and out of form. Later Nora would put those instructions to the test, a little practice after the lesson. After all, if Jaune could hold against a strike from Magnhild (a _gentle_ strike, she wasn’t trying to actually squash him), he would be fine against anything the grimm had to offer.

Nora watched her leader, following lessons recorded by a girl who was now dust. Pyrrha had been a good teacher, able to hold the attention of the flighty Nora and encourage the self-conscious Jaune, to teach them and learn from them at the same time, never commanding or unkind. That girl had been the best teacher Nora had ever had.

She was gone now, like so many other people in Nora’s life. Familiarity didn’t make loss any easier. But Nora would be damned if she wasn’t going to put every single lesson Pyrrha had ever given her to the best use she could. Pyrrha would be proud of them.

“Good job,” encouraged Pyrrha’s voice from the scroll, and Nora said nothing and let Jaune pretend he was wiping sweat and not tears from his face.

Pyrrha was gone, dust in the sky, and yet here she was still protecting them. Nora watched Jaune readjust his grip on Crocea Mors, and pressed play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew that was a mess. if/when i do edit this (heavilyyy edit this), this is probably going to be the chapter that gets the most work. but i could find no way to make it feel acceptable, so i just threw everything down and gave up. 
> 
> next chapter will be both more eventful/interactive and also a whole lot shorter.


	7. Rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost there! these are basically just the last scraps before the ending, but i liked them and wanted to add them in. r&n background discussed is still my own old one and not what is now canon, sorry. if you want the full backstory, it can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8203772). if you don’t, what’s covered in ch4 of this story is probably enough to not get lost completely.

Jaune flung himself to the side to avoid being flattened by Magnhild.  The warhammer crashed down a heartbeat later, leaving a slightly-smoking crater behind as Nora used the rebound to launch herself back into the air.  Ren’s attack came just too late but the ninja hit the ground lightly, rolling back to his feet and firing Stormflower in an arc of rosy light after his partner. 

Nora’s laughter was like crystal.  There was no catching her, and Jaune and Ren were forced to bolt again as Magnhild’s pink heart-shaped grenades rained from the sky.  Ren vanished for a moment, reappearing at Jaune’s side and together they blocked out the explosions with Crocea Mors’s shield and Ren’s pinkish bubble-like Aura shields.  Then they returned to the attack. 

It had felt like they would never recover from the Fall of Beacon, but time had still passed and they had healed.  And now that they were talking about going back, thinking about returning to the profession they had trained for – one that was dangerous but all the more needed now – they had started training again. 

It was like being back at Beacon.  Except that they were down a teammate, and there were scars on Ren and Nora’s skin and in all their hearts.  And that half of the Arcs were watching the practice. 

They were, of course, all seated safely out of the range of fire.  Camille had a little book in her lap and was taking notes intensely, eyes flicking between the three Hunters and their weapons.  Antoinette sat at her sister’s side, leaning over every once in a while with an observation that was always instantly scribbled down. 

Corinne was watching too, her nurse’s eye critically observing the movements of Nora and Ren.  Given how the battle was going, they were clearly fully healed.  Nora flung herself twenty feet into the air, standing on Magnhild like it was the rolling deck of a ship before bringing the hammer down with earth-splitting force.  Ren ran and leapt and spun, looking as much a dancer as a warrior, but his aim was flawless and his shoulder did not seem to be giving him any problems.  Jaune had received no serious damage in the Fall of Beacon, but he seemed happier now, more settled.  His determination in the mock fight was admirable, going full-force with his simple sword and shield despite the tactical disadvantage against Nora’s grenade-launcher-warhammer. 

Nicolette and Marie sat beside their mother and argued over which of their brother’s team was best.  Marie’s attachment to her brother had gotten a bit bowled over by her sudden adoration of everything Nora, but of course now that Nicolette thought Nora was cool the youngest Arc had reverted to defending her brother’s honor ferociously.  They bickered mostly quietly as in the background Jaune was slowly but surely beaten into the ground by Nora’s sheer energy. 

Energy in both the metaphorical and literal senses it turned out, as a bolt of lightning flicker-flashed and burst into the center of the clearing, knocking everyone onto their heels with the force. 

Nora fluffed dust from her hair and brushed off her shorts.  “Um,” she said apologetically, “sorry?”

Ren had ended up in a tree, although more likely by intent than by the lightning’s force.  He was accustomed to his partner’s electrical tendencies and did not seem at all alarmed about the near-electrocution.  He waved one hand to show that he was unharmed. 

Jaune had been bowled right over, but when he sat up he was laughing.  “I don’t even care that we lost,” he said, “I will _never_ get over how cool it is to have a literal generator on my team.”  Nora’s smile could have powered a city as she reached out a hand to help her leader back to his feet, and Jaune didn’t even complain when he nearly got yanked right off the ground. 

Nicolette was staring at the group with a mixture of shock and adoration on her face.  “Oh my god,” she whispered, “that’s _so cool!”_  

“Isn’t it?” Jaune agreed.  “That wasn’t even a big one, Nora can knock an ursa right off its feet if she’s charged up enough!” Nora nodded enthusiastically, and might have offered to go stick her finger in one of the house’s light sockets to demonstrate right then and there, but Ren appeared out of nowhere and snagged her by the collar before she could do anything that the Arcs’ electrician might regret. 

Camille stared and stared, but finally she blinked and made a faint, dazed note in her book.  Antoinette was laughing silently, shaking her head in amazement.  Her brother sure had himself an interesting team. 

The two youngest Arcs were starry-eyed, pestering Nora with a hundred and one questions about Magnhild, about being a human lightning rod, about where she’d gotten her shoes (an odd question for the timing, but Nicolette had never once in her life been accused of being a logical person), about if she had ever squashed Jaune (Marie, too, was a famous asker of weird questions).  Nora was open and responsive, answering as she and the rest of the team took a break for water and weapons checkover that Magnhild was specially designed for the electricity, that she had a _whole story_ about how she’d discovered her semblance, that Ren had gotten the shoes for her, that she had only ever squashed Jaune _just a little bit, look, he’s fine now, it was totally okay._   Jaune drank his water and watched, feeling happier than he had in months. 

After a while Isabelle began to round up her children.  “Lunchtime,” she announced, herding Nicolette and Marie as one tried to sneak off and the other got distracted by a butterfly.  “I’m sure you’ve worked up an appetite with practice, and we might as well make a real meal instead of snacking out here.” The group had gone to a nearby field for the training to avoid making a smoking ruin of the Arc backyard.  What with the lightning and general effects of Hunter combat, it had been a very good idea. 

“Good plan,” Corinne agreed, “but I think Colette’s gonna have to miss out on food prep chores.” The designer looked a little in shock (pun _way_ too intended, Ruby had been such a bad influence) and had to be led along by Antoinette, mumbling quietly to herself about superconductors and metal alloys and break ranges. 

“I’ll help,” Ren called to Isabelle as he checked that he had both halves of Stormflower and the other tools he’d brought out for the day. 

“Pancakes!” Nora cried as they started, and Jaune shook his head with a sigh. 

“Nora, it’s lunch.”

“Lunch pancakes!”

“But we had pancakes for breakfast.”

“Pancakes always!”

“No.”

Nora pouted, at least until Ren appeared at her side.  “Pancakes tomorrow morning,” he said, “spaghetti now.”  His sister huffed but seemed appeased by the idea of meatballs.  She took his hand and skipped a little as they walked, going only a few paces before impatiently waving her free hand at Jaune until he came over and took it. 

The three walked a little behind the Arc girls.  Nora hummed to herself as she swung both joined hands gently with each step.  Not one of them was limping.  Jaune and Nora bore the weights of Crocea Mors and Magnhild easily, and Ren was soundless beside them, a rose-and-green shadow with a rare, contented smile on his face. 

Despite the new audience they’d had, the day was the closest to normal that they had felt since Beacon had fallen, and they treasured it. 

* * *

“Hey Jaune,” Nora said out of nowhere, “I really like your family.”

Jaune rolled over.  He’d been reading X-Ray and Vav, the three of them settled and quiet in the bedroom, and the comment caught him off-guard.  “Um,” he said, “thanks?”

“They’re so great,” Nora went on blithely.  “I totally thought we were going to get sent off after, like two nights, but it’s been like _months_ and your family’s totally fine!  Your sisters are cool and your parents are nice and your house is _huge_ and–”

Ren reached over and covered his sister’s mouth.  “What Nora’s trying to say,” he said, not quite meeting Jaune’s eyes, “is that we really appreciate everything you and your family have done for us.” 

Jaune blinked.  “Thanks?” he repeated.  “I mean, it really didn’t even occur to me that anything else would have happened.  After – after Beacon, after everything… I had to.  I couldn’t leave you.” 

“I think it was the first time anyone ever came back for us,” Nora murmured.  But before Jaune could respond or even really process that frankly painful comment, she had switched right back over to bubbliness.  “But really, your family is so awesome!  If I had brought back a couple of traumatized teenagers home after a fight that destroyed an entire city, my mom would have completely lost it.”

Ren snorted.  “That’s putting it lightly.  My mother might have handled it, but my father would have been completely lost.”

Nora giggled.  “And we were both single children!  Your parents had to deal with us _on top of_ the humungous pile of sisters you’ve got.  Seriously, when you said you had like a million sisters I thought you were exaggerating.  I was expecting, like, three girl-Jaunes, not twenty-five!”

“Jaune has seven sisters,” Ren reminded her. 

“Seven, schmeven.  It’s a lot of sisters.  I still think that there are a few in storage and they switch out once in a while just to keep us on our toes.”

“I’m glad you’re both happy here,” Jaune said, and it was almost alarming how quickly the two snapped their attention back onto him.  He cleared his throat a little awkwardly.  This was thin ice, but he’d been thinking about it for a long time, and they had brought it up, and he would back off in a heartbeat if either of them showed any reluctance to talk.  _Here goes._   “To be honest, I was a little worried.  After Beacon, all I wanted to do was go home, and I couldn’t leave either of you so I just took you with me.  I only realized later that taking you to a house with a big wealthy important family that was safe and happy, right after having grimm destroy the home we’d all been living in for a whole year, was maybe not the greatest plan.  I wanted to apologize for that, I should have thought things through more clearly rather than just taking off for the first place I could think of.”

They stared at him for a few seconds longer than was really comfortable, and Jaune shifted a little.  “I’m glad that it went well and that you’re both happy here, though.  I didn’t even think whether my family would be okay with everything – even whether they would really be happy for me to show up spontaneously after I basically ran away to become a Hunter – but I guess we got lucky.”

“Jaune,” Nora said flatly, “you’re an idiot.”

Ren came to the rescue.  “This was the best thing that has ever happened to us, Jaune, family and all.  We – I don’t even remember most of what was happening after the battle.  I know Nora told me that we were going to try to go back to Umbra Academy, but… if that hadn’t worked, we would have been lost, maybe forever.  You did the best thing, Jaune.”

Jaune was at a loss for words, but his team wasn’t done yet. 

“We haven’t had a real home for years,” Nora said quietly.  “Our parents died when we were just kids – the whole village, gone.  Orphanages and streets were… not great, and Umbra was better but we were still basically on our own.  Being at Beacon–”

“Jaune, _JNPR was the best thing that ever happened to us_ ,” Ren burst out.  His eyes were squeezed shut, and Nora grabbed one of his hands, the chosen-siblings holding onto each other tightly.  After a moment of hesitation, Jaune did the same with his other hand. 

Nora spoke again, finding the words Ren couldn’t as she always had.  “Maybe you and Pyrrha knew, maybe you didn’t.  We sure didn’t open up much, at least at first.  But the short version is this: we used to live really far away, in a tiny village way outside the kingdoms and the walls.  One day when we were little, the grimm came.  We don’t know why.  They just did. 

“The grimm came, and no Hunters or Huntresses showed up to save us.  My mom was the only real Huntress in the whole village, and… she got overwhelmed pretty fast.  When the grimm finally left, the whole town was gone and Ren and I were the only ones left. 

“Nobody ever came for us.  We spent… I don’t even know, the next few years I guess, either on the streets or in orphanages, at least until we ran away again.  Then we got into Umbra and started training to become Hunters.  After that, we went to Beacon.”

“And we met you.” Ren seemed to have recovered, but he didn’t let go of either of his teammates’ hands.  “We became partners, officially, and the other half of our team was you and Pyrrha.” 

“We’d been so afraid,” Nora said, quieter than usual.  “We hadn’t trusted anyone in years, what if our team was bad?  What would we do then?”

“But the universe finally turned out on our side for once.  We got you two,” Ren said, and there was remembered contentment in his eyes.  “You and Pyrrha… you were the first people to matter to us since the grimm came to our village.  And you cared about us.  It was… that was the best year we’ve had since we were children.”

Jaune sat there, thunderstruck.  He’d guessed some of it, of course, but hearing the whole story was a lot to take in.  He was struck with a nearly overwhelming sense of gratitude for his team, for not leaving them at Beacon. 

Beacon… “We were JNPR, and then the grimm came again,” he murmured, finally understanding the whole story. 

“Then the grimm came,” Ren agreed.  “Again.  And the world seemed to end, again.  We lost Pyrrha, we lost the school, our friends were wounded and the security of Beacon betrayed.  We were hurt and lost, we didn’t know what to do.  And then you showed up.”

“The first person to ever come back for us,” Nora said, leaning against Ren to smile across to Jaune.  “You came back, and you took us _home._   You can’t imagine, Jaune.  We thought you’d just take us to a safer town, or let us stay for a few days to heal.  But you _took us home,_ and you let us stay.  Your family didn’t ask any questions, didn’t push or pry.  They just… let us be here, with you.”

“I remember feeling safe, even at the beginning,” Ren murmured.  “I remember Nora and you, and not being afraid.  We were safe, we didn’t have to be worried about anything.”

“I was kind of scared of your family at first,” Nora said, only half-joking.  “I thought that they might think we were invading, trying to steal you, or that they would try to be like our families too.

“But they didn’t do either.  Your mom took care of us, and your sister treated our injuries, but your mom doesn’t try to act like she’s my mom, and Corinne doesn’t treat me like I’m her little sister.  Your dad talks to us like Hunters, like friends of his son, but never like we’re his kids.” She shook her head.  “I guess it helps that neither of your parents are anything like any of ours.”

“Nora’s mother would have squashed your father flat,” Ren said, amusement in his voice.  “She wouldn’t even have needed Brunhilde to do it.  She was a terrifying and amazing woman.”  Then, “I think my father would have liked your mother.  They worked in much the same way, your mother’s organization and calmness makes me think of him.”

Nora’s smile held remembered pain, but it was layered beneath the happiness she had found since then.  “Sometimes I wanted to be part of a big family, have lots and lots of siblings around.”

“No, you really don’t,” Jaune muttered, and she laughed. 

“Maybe not.  Your family is a storm in a teapot and is held together only by your mom’s honestly _impressive_ management skills.  Seriously, she would run a Hunter-training school alone better than most entire boards.  But when I was little, I wanted that.  Then, I didn’t want anybody in the entire world except Ren.  It was a really weird feeling to realize I cared about you and Pyrrha, too.” She rocked side to side a little.  “I… she was amazing.  I wanted to learn everything from her.  I wanted to teach her how to have fun.  I wanted… I’d never had a sister.” The last part was almost whispered. 

“Our families were gone, and they were never coming back.  We had become happy, just the two of us.  JNPR was becoming a new family.  A pair of complete strangers, you and Pyrrha, were somehow becoming as important to us as we were to each other.  It was weird.  It was scary.  It was amazing.”

“And then it was gone.  The tournament went wrong and Pyrrha went away and never came back, like everyone always did.”

“Except you.” Ren was looking at Jaune now, staring at him with that incredible terrifying intensity.  “Our world had just ended, _again_ , and you came back for us.  You had lost your partner, everything was burning, and you came back and found us.  And you took us to your own home, to your family.  And they accepted us too.  It’s been months.  We’ve healed, we’ve recovered.  We’re still together.”

“Always,” Jaune said through the tightness in his throat.  And he meant it.  These two were his team.  His family – different from the family filling the house around them, but rapidly becoming just as close and treasured.  He had come back for them after Beacon, and even though he hadn’t known how important that action was, it had still been significant.  He was never leaving them, and they would never abandon him. 

Ren leaned against his side, and Nora flopped over to put her head in Jaune’s lap.  He stroked her hair with the hand not still holding Ren’s.  This was his team. 

* * *

Carrying the snacks pinned under his arm and carefully balancing Ren’s tea and his and Nora’s drink cans, Jaune pushed the door of his bedroom open with his shoulder.  “Hey guys, I got us some – what are you doing?”

His teammates were both sitting on his bed, but their old clothes from Beacon were laid out there as well.  And – was that Jaune’s mother’s sewing box on the foot of the bed?  Jaune was very confused. 

Nora looked up.  “We’re fixing things,” she said, bouncing a little.  Although her voice and face were bright, Jaune knew her well enough to see the underlying strain, like how a nervous dog could still smile while showing its stress. 

Ren stayed focused on the clothes in front of him.  “They needed to be fixed eventually, so we asked your parents if they had any sewing tools, and now we’re doing it.”

Jaune brought the food and drinks over and settled on Ren’s other side, careful to not disturb the fabric.  Seeing the tears and marks on the clothes brought back memories of that night, sharp and hard and he didn’t realize that he had been holding his breath until Ren tapped his knee carefully. 

Of course.  They could get new clothes and throw these damaged ones away, but Ren and Nora had never had much money and had learned long ago to repair rather than replace.  And these clothes… there was an attachment beyond just material possessions, one that Jaune could understand.  Beacon had changed all of their lives.  They didn’t want to let go. 

 “I don’t think I can salvage this,” Ren said, holding up Nora’s old vest.  It was armor, sort of, but even Jaune with his complete and utter lack of understanding of all things crafty could tell that the metal pieces were twisted beyond repair, and what remained of most of the fabric parts were completely shredded.  The ursa claws had really done a number on the armoring, and Jaune shuddered to think of what could have happened if Nora hadn’t been wearing it. 

Nora frowned.  “But Ren–”

“I can’t fix it,” Ren said sharply, and both Nora and Jaune flinched.  The sort-of-ninja sighed, closing his eyes for a moment.  “I’m sorry.  But I can’t.  It’s too damaged.  I might be able to at least trace the Valkyrie symbol, though, to transfer it to something new.”

Nora nodded.  “I’m sorry too,” she whispered.  “I know you can’t fix it.  I just… I just wish…”

“We know,” Jaune said, leaning against Ren’s side and brushing his fingers across the back of Nora’s hands.  They all knew she wasn’t talking about her jacket anymore. 

After a moment, Ren shifted, digging through the pile of fabric to tug out Nora’s old skirt.  “This mostly escaped damage,” he said, turning it this way and that.  “I can patch up the rips and it should look just fine.”

Nora gave him a smile at that, and it looked a little more stable than she had a minute ago.  “Thanks, Ren.”

Ren put the skirt down decisively, not in the same pile as Nora’s old vest.  He traced his fingers across the material of her white shirt.  None of the clothes had escaped damage, but the top had a deep slash across the heart-shaped keyhole in the front.  Jaune had missed that part of the fight, but it was obvious that it had been a near miss.  Even with Aura helping to speed the healing process, a deep cut there, so close to the throat, the lungs, the heart, would be a serious wound. 

Before Ren could say anything about the shirt, about what he could do with it, Nora’s hand shot out, grabbing the hem tightly in her fist.  “Don’t patch that,” she said. 

Both boys stared at her, clearly very puzzled.  The Valkyrie bit her lip.  “I … I want to keep it.  I don’t know why.  I’m sorry, I’ll just –”

“Nora, it’s okay,” Ren said, meeting her eyes, and she stilled.  Jaune was growing closer to them with every day, a half-euphoric half-painful bond forged with trauma and partnership, but he didn’t think that he would ever have the connection the two did; the way Ren could calm Nora with a look, how Nora could get Ren to move and talk when nothing else worked.  He was glad that they had each other, at least, and that more and more he was becoming a part of that, but he knew that there was a certain level that he would never reach.  That was okay.  He knew they had a past together, and that was something that nothing else could ever quite compare to. 

“Think of it this way,” Jaune said, poking Nora playfully in her side, though he made sure that it was the one that didn’t bear the scars matching the rends in her old, now-unsalvageable vest.  “It’s one less rip for Ren to sew back up.”

Nora squeaked at the tickling and swatted Jaune’s wrist.  “That’s true.  You’re welcome, Ren!”

Ren sighed, blowing a breath upwards to shift his bangs out of his face.  “Thank you so very much.”

“Sorry neither of us know how to sew,” Jaune said, feeling at least a little contrite.  He had other clothes, although he wanted to keep what he could of his old armor.  Ren and Nora didn’t, really – Ren was wearing Jaune’s shirt and pants, and Nora had on what looked like Orianne’s capris and Fleur’s tank top.  He knew that the fixing of their old outfits was part thriftiness and part sentimentality, but he felt kind of bad that all of the repairs were falling to Ren alone. 

“I don’t mind,” Ren said, opening Jaune’s mother’s sewing box and selecting a bobbin of pink thread that was closest to the color of Nora’s skirt.  “I learned how to sew from my father when I was little.  He was a tailor, he was teaching me.” He paused, drawing out a length of thread and cutting it.  “We didn’t make it very far past the basics.”

“But you kept teaching yourself!” Nora said, forcing a little extra positivity into her words.  “You’re really good now!”

“I have to be, Nora.  You tear up your clothes just living, you don’t need a disaster to have to fix everything.” Nora stuck her tongue out but didn’t argue.  He was right, after all. 

“What are you going to do about your clothes, Ren?” Jaune asked when Ren had finished doing what he could with the skirt. 

Ren tied off the last knot and sighed.  “I … don’t really know.  The sleeves of my coat are ruined, I can’t fix them.”  It looked like it hurt him to say it. 

“So just take ’em off,” Nora said, digging the coat out from the pile and examining the tatters of the sleeves.  Ren blinked at her, and she puffed out her cheeks and explained.  “I remember when I tore up the sleeve of that shirt when we were little, you just cut both of them off and made it into a tank top.  So do that!  Sleeveless coat, ta-da!”

Ren took the coat from her, turning it over in his hands and examining it carefully.  He traced his fingers through the gaping holes, far too large and numerous to be sewn back together.  “I suppose I could…” he trailed off, getting lost in the damage of the green material and the memories bound to it. 

Not good.  “Great idea, Nora.  If you don’t want your arms to be totally bare, I think Corinne might have some cool fabric that you could make into gauntlets or something.”

Ren looked up at him, seeming to snap out of the drifting haze.  He nodded.  “Yeah.  That would be nice.”

There was a lot to do.  Nora’s gloves were battered but she was insistent on keeping them, so Ren did what he could while Jaune cut out Nora’s jacket symbol and removed the sleeves of Ren’s coat as carefully as possible.  Nora plowed through the snack pile with the determination and concentration of a very hungry boarbatusk, but she gave Ren the little packet of hard candies that she found and threw crackers at Jaune periodically. 

(You know that Nora Valkyrie truly loves you if she is willing to share her food with you.)

They spent the rest of the afternoon holed up in Jaune’s room, the snack pile slowly diminishing in size and the repaired clothing pile slowly growing, along with the small heap of pieces that not even Ren could salvage.  Nora’s old shoes – absolutely destroyed, leaping around with Magnhild was not easy on footwear and the final battle at Beacon had been the last straw.  Ren’s pants – the right leg ripped open from halfway down the thigh across most of the shin, the heavy nails of a creep tearing the fabric like wet paper.  Nora’s armor, twisted beyond repair by the claws of an enraged ursa; most of Ren’s undershirt, ruined along with the coat by nevermore talons and beowolf teeth. 

As Nora rooted through what remained of the snacks, Jaune watched Ren.  He was working on something that Jaune at first thought was a scrap torn from his own coat, but then it clicked.  That red piece didn’t belong to Ren, nor to Nora or Jaune himself.  It was Pyrrha’s.  It had been her sash, once upon a time, and it had held her diadem when Qrow had brought it back to Jaune, who had kept it all the way to Domremy.  It must have gotten torn off in the fight on the tower, or it would be just as gone as the rest of Pyrrha. 

Now Ren was… fixing it?  The sash had been all but ruined, ripped and torn and singed.  Not even Ren could fix that.  But then Jaune looked closer and realized that his teammate wasn’t trying to fix it, not outright.  Instead, he had cut it, removing the ruined ends and much of the width, keeping only what could still be saved.  It would be changed, but it was still the same cloth Pyrrha had worn every day.  Ren continued working, cutting strips and patches from the undamaged pieces of the sash, salvaging all he could from his friend’s fabric. 

Once Nora had demolished all the food that she could find in the room, she settled down on the corner of the bed with her back against Jaune’s side, doodling on a scrap of paper she had dug out from somewhere in his desk, probably.  Jaune watched as she scribbled, marking up a little vest with big sleeves, open with a zipper, pink accents of course but with a red lining like Ren’s coat had.  The hammer-and-lightning-bolt Valkyrie crest went on the back, bigger than the old one and pink this time. 

She moved on, modifying parts of Ren’s coat and doodling the fastenings and details from memory, as familiar to the design as her own symbol.  She added ties, some different from what the coat had now, and Jaune remembered that Ren didn’t like zippers for whatever reason.  The doodled pants were different too, and some kind of long glove covered most of where the arms would be bare without the tatters of the old sleeves. 

Jaune was more than a little surprised when Nora’s next page of scribbles featured a very familiar set of armor.  It wasn’t quite the same, though.  There were more actual armor pieces, vambraces and proper pauldrons and other things that Jaune didn’t actually have.  It was odd, but … not terrible.  The hoodie and jeans were the same, and there were still gloves beneath the vambraces, but the extra pieces of armor didn’t change it so much that he was unrecognizable.  That was Jaune Arc. 

Nora seemed to be mostly asleep at this point, doodling whatever ideas crossed her mind, but looking at the pages – a vest emblazoned with an electrified warhammer, a coat drawn from years of memory, greater armoring without losing the original design… Jaune had a feeling that Team JNPR would be making use of those sleepy sketches in the future. 

* * *

A few weeks into JNR’s stay with the Arcs, Jaune had written a letter to Ruby, with input from Ren and Nora as they looked over his shoulders.  The extended lack of response had been more alarming than any of them had verbalized, and there were no words for the relief they had all felt when an envelope addressed from Patch finally arrived in the mailbox.  There had been little actual good news – Yang still in bad shape, Blake still missing, no word from Weiss at her father’s house in Atlas – but it was news.  And it told that Ruby was all right, at least physically. 

Between the two groups, they gathered bits and pieces of information of those left after Beacon burned.  Sage, Scarlet, and Neptune were on their way back to Vacuo – Neptune had talked to Ceilie who had talked to River who had talked to Kidue who lived near Patch.  Sun was somewhere, probably taking the same way back home as he had come to Vale (some things, ridiculous monkey-tailed faunuses among them, never changed).  Through the grapevine came the information that most of the foreign teams visiting for the Tournament were well and on their way back home.  FNKI was in good shape and causing a commotion wherever they went.  BRNZ had nearly lost one of their members, but he had pulled through and the team was still intact.  Coco was apparently leading a ferocious CFVY in managing the grimm in the areas around Beacon, helping get the last people out and keeping the monsters away from other towns.  Their being alive lent some hope – the world wouldn’t end if Coco Adel had anything to say about it, and by the reports, she had a darn lot to say to any grimm that tried to leave the ruins of Beacon.  Of CRDL there was no word, but none of JNR really wanted to hear from them anyway. 

The letters had continued, flowing from Domremy to Patch and back, and eventually they got to texting some, when the signal was clear in Patch.  Jaune had grown to like Ruby during their time together at Beacon.  She was a good leader, a smart studying partner who filled in Jaune’s weak learning skills as he did hers, and a wonderful friend.  Ren and Nora liked her too, and that was to say nothing of how close RWBY and JNPR had become even over the single year they had spent as named teams.  Nora had adored sparring against Yang, and although he rarely spoke of it, Jaune knew that Ren had enjoyed Blake’s company, even if their time together was mostly spent reading separate books in a vaguely close space in the library.  

(Weiss had adored Pyrrha and later grown to truly be a friend to her, but that didn’t quite bear thinking about.)

They talked back and forth, the remains of JNPR aching for Ruby, her team wounded and scattered to the winds, Ruby aching for JNPR and the hard heavy loss of their teammate – at least hers were still somewhere out there.  Yang popped in once or twice, healing slowly but healing. 

And then, a few months after the fall of Beacon and the loss of Pyrrha and so many others, it came down to it.  They were Hunters.  The Battle of Beacon had been terrible.  JNPR had lost one of its own, and RWBY had been wounded and scattered like rose petals.  But they were still Hunters, and they had work to do.  The world still existed.  They needed to go back. 

JNR had walked through fire.  They had survived, they had healed.  Now, they were ready to walk back into the flames. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just had to include the clothing thing. it was in my brain from the moment we saw the new outfits, i couldn’t stop thinking about what was similar, what was different, how/why those changes might have been made. definitely read too far into it, but whatever. it was one of the funnest parts to write. also reflects my obsession with costumes (why oh why does ren’s coat have to be so complicated)
> 
> also a heads-up: i might be a little slow in the final chapter (no surprise there, i’m sure…). it’s the end, so i really want it to be good. also, voltron s3 is coming out and i know that i am going to be sucked back into space adventures again. i will do my best to not take forever, and thank you all for sticking with this thing despite my incapacity for timeliness.


	8. RJNR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s time. 
> 
> JNR leaves for Patch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO UNIVERSE. I am very sorry for the loooong wait for this last chapter. In short, I moved to Finland. That was a thing. Fic things kinda had to go to the back burner for a bit (no matter how much I wanted to write anyway). Thank you very much for waiting. 
> 
> This is the final chapter of the ridiculously long and sprawling _(30k how the heck)_ thing that came from me fussing about the lack of JNPR bonding and support and interaction after V3 ended, which was not solved in any way by the release of V4. I tried very, very hard through this whole fic to talk about what needed to be talked about in ways that worked, to explore all the things that are so frequently ignored when serious things happen in canon, and to pour as much fluff and cuddle piles and soft feelings into one fic as possible, considering the setup. I hope it was good. Thank you for your interest and your patience. 
> 
> And one last time: I know it’s RNJR. I’m sticking with Regenerate. This whole damn fic was conceived before V4 came out and I ain’t changing it.

This was it. 

Nearly four months ago, Beacon had fallen.  The White Fang and Cinder and the grimm had attacked, and the school had burned and Pyrrha Nikos had died.  In the wake of the disaster, Jaune Arc had seen his two surviving teammates kneeling bloody in the rubble and, on a shell-shocked whim, had taken them home with him.  They had turned up at the Arc residence in Domremy stunned and battered, with no forewarning and a lot of physical and emotional damage.  The Arcs had taken them in – all of them. 

Four months later, JN(P)R was still standing.  And not only standing.  They were going back.  They had work to do.  The Battle of Beacon had been terrible, and they had lost one of their own, but the world still existed and they had a job to do. 

Ruby was waiting in Patch.  JNR would travel to her, and from Patch they would head to Mistral.  It wasn’t a terribly detailed plan, but they didn’t have much to plan _on._   News was hard to come by, and updates about anything anywhere were few and far between.  RWBY and JNPR had always been good at improvising.  They would make it work. 

Jaune was struggling with the leaving a bit, though.  He had left home on… well, “not spectacular terms” was probably an understatement, what with the whole ran-away-under-cover-of-darkness-plus-stole-the-family-heirloom business.  But when he’d finally come home with two strangers trailing behind, his family had welcomed him, and Ren and Nora, with open arms.  He’d talked with his parents, really talked, for the first time in maybe a longer time than he’d thought.  He had reconnected with his oldest sister, and finally been forgiven by his littlest.  His childhood home was a bubble of safety and security and near-normalcy while the world outside tossed and raged and screamed.  He… he didn’t want to leave. 

But all that was precisely why he needed to go.  The world was burning, and Jaune Arc, despite what some people might think, was a Hunter.  He had things to protect.  His father had retired, his mother was not a Huntress.  Even Camille was only a weapons designer – she didn’t fight.  Nobody in his family was a combatant.  Jaune was lucky to have a family who loved him, a home he could come back to.  And although he didn’t want to leave them, they were exactly why he had to go.  He had a home: he needed to make sure that he didn’t lose it, that nobody ever had to lose a home again.  Jaune was a Hunter, and he was a leader, and he was going to do his job. 

Ren and Nora had exactly the same issue in mirror.  They had never actually willingly left something good, not in all their lives.  Their home had been ripped away from them, there had been nothing good while living on their own, Umbra had simply changed to Beacon, and Beacon had burned.  Jaune’s family was – it was still kind of overwhelming, how good and kind and wonderful and amazing it was, and they didn’t know how to leave.  This place – this _home_ – wasn’t being ripped away.  They needed to go of their own accord, and it felt like the hardest thing they had ever done.  But Jaune was going with them (they knew now, deeply and truly, their leader would never leave them), and that was enough.  Nora and Ren could do anything, with Jaune beside them.  They could make it through anything.  After all, they already had. 

It had been nearly four months since Beacon had fallen, and it was time for JNR to leave. 

The trio was well-supplied, food packed by Isabelle with Ren’s assistance, weapons cleaned and sharpened and checked over more than was probably really necessary.  Corinne had packed a first aid kit (it was a pretty big one, but nobody had any protests.  With their track record, it would be well-used soon enough).  Nora had gotten new shoes with Nicolette and Fleur, and on the back of her new black jacket blazed the Valkyrie crest in bright pink, carefully painted on by Orianne.  She wore the slashed-heart on her chest like a badge, like a shield.  Ren’s coat had undergone a series of edits as he worked to salvage what he could from the severely damaged piece, but he’d finally completed it.  The gauntlets from Corinne were new and different, but they echoed the pink streak in his hair (redyed with Nora only a week ago) and looked good.  Jaune had gone with Nora’s doodle-ideas: more armor, still gold-on-white to match the old pieces.  Camille had said it made him look older.  She hadn’t seemed to know herself whether that was a good or a bad thing.  They all looked different – a lot had happened – but they were still JNPR. 

(Even after all this, they were still JNPR.  Jaune wore the majority of Pyrrha’s sash wrapped around his waist, a stripped-down version of her old style, as much as Ren could salvage.  Ren used part of it to make the cords binding his coat.  The inside of Nora’s jacket had a tiny red heart-shaped inside pocket sewn into the left side of her jacket.  Pyrrha was still with them.  Even though his backpack was laden down with all kinds of supplies, Jaune imagined that he could still feel the weight of her diadem.  They were still JNPR.  They always would be.)

Saying goodbye was hard, for everyone involved.  JNR had been with the Arcs for months, everyone had settled into the dynamic, grown used to Jaune being home, accustomed to the two new members of the family.  The little sisters thought Nora was the coolest person in the entire universe.  Fleur was relieved to have a more introverted partner to talk books with, or just sit with and not talk at all, in the midst of all her wild loud siblings (and boy did Ren understand that feeling).  Antoinette had never quite shown how relieved she was to have her little brother back, but he knew it anyway. 

“I’m serious, if you don’t send me some good pictures of grimm while you’re off dragging my brother around on adventures I will go out there myself and track you down.”

Nora laughed at the mock-serious look on Orianne’s face.  “Don’t worry, I promise to take a whole pile of selfies with the next ursa that we find.  Maybe beowolves make duck faces!  It’ll be a scientific discovery!” There were two seconds of Orianne staring at Nora, utterly baffled, before the two of them burst into giggles. 

Camille stood beside Ren, checking over the packs one last time with him.  “If any of you need anything, let us know,” she said quietly.  “I can give mechanics advice just as easily over a Scroll.  I mean – it’s not that I think you all can’t repair your own weapons, it’s just–”

“I know,” Ren said.  Almost subconsciously he brushed one hand over StormFlower hanging at his side.  “We know you trust us with our own weapons, but I would never have thought of the modifications you came up with for StormFlower.  We appreciate it.”

“You better come back soon,” Marie said with her most serious face, glaring at Jaune.  “And next time I wanna come too.”

Jaune raised his hands in mock surrender.  “I promise, Marie.  I’ll be back as soon as I can, and we can definitely talk about you coming on some adventures too sometime.”

“And bring Nora and Ren back too!” This was thrown over her shoulder as the littlest Arc ran off to join a handful of other sisters in begging for one last lightning display from Nora.  Hopefully Ren or maybe Corinne would stop that soon, before Nora took out the whole neighborhood. 

“You’ve got yourself quite a team, little brother.”

Jaune jumped at the sound of Antoinette’s voice behind him.  He turned to face her, a grin that was both bashful and proud on his face.  “Yeah,” he said, watching Nora giving Marie one last piggyback ride, Ren talking quietly with Fleur.  “I really do.”

“Be careful out there.” Antoinette somehow always managed to sound deeply serious and half-joking at the same time.  “Keep them safe.  I know they’ll do the same for you.  You’re a good team.” She looked down at her half-brother, her only brother.  “I wish I could have met your partner.  She sounds like an incredible person.  But so are these two.  Hold on to them, Jaune.”

Jaune nodded.  Though he was standing still, he felt almost breathless.  “I will,” he said, and it came out as almost a whisper.  A whisper, but no less strong of a promise. 

* * *

“Do you really think they’ll be alright?”

“They’re together.  We’ve done all we can for them, Isabelle.  They have to do this.”

“But – they could – … I know.  I know.  I just… I worry.  I worried about Jaune when he was safe at Beacon.  But now it feels like the world is burning down, and he is going straight into the flames.”

“He’s not alone.  He has Nora and Ren, and they’re going to meet their friend.  They can do this.”

“I know.  They’ve only just left, but I already can’t wait for them to come home.  They’ll all come home.  They have to.”

“They will.  We know they can.  We’ve given them something to come home to.  We’ve given them something to protect.  I remember when I still Hunted; that was the most important thing we could have.  It feels like an endless war, like you can’t ever win against the darkness.  Then I’d remember my family, my friends.  My home.  They made it worth the fight.”

“Whatever those children went through, maybe this will help them now.  It’s almost funny; we have two more children now, Jacques.  I can’t say I was expecting that when Jaune came home, but I couldn’t be happier.  Those two are something else.”

“They really are.  I know we weren’t expecting Jaune to run off and join Beacon, but it’s so clear how much it’s changed him, for the better.  Pyrrha’s death will always be with him, but so will she.  I know that.  And he has those two with him as well.  I think they’ll be alright.”

“Jaune’s grown up so much over the last year.  He really is deserving of your family’s sword now.  I think he always was.”

* * *

Domremy was fading in the distance, and Jaune could already feel homesickness pulling at him like a magnet. 

But there was another pull, too.  Nora’s pink-gloved hand was warm around his, the girl skipping a little with anticipation at the new adventure that lay ahead.  Sure, it was going to be rough and difficult, but Nora Valkryie was no stranger to those.  She would persist anyway.  Ren held her other hand, tugging her the right way at crossroads with that calm settled certainty. 

Jaune was leaving his family behind at home, but another family was coming with him. 

“I wonder what Ruby will say when she sees us,” Nora chattered.  “I bet her house is super cool.  Her dad was a hunter too, Jaune!  Maybe she has cookies, I miss cookies.”

“You had three cookies at breakfast, Nora.”

“I knoooow, but breakfast was forever ago!”

“It was only a few hours ago.”

“Too long without cookies!”

“I packed some cookies,” Jaune said before his teammates could get into a squabble.  “Some from Mom, and a few of Orianne’s secret recipe.”

Nora squealed, briefly letting go of her friends’ hands so she could fling herself at Jaune in a somewhat violent hug.  “You’re the bestest, Jaune!  The Best Leader, it’s you.”

Jaune laughed, and Nora untangled herself so that she could resume swinging hands and skipping.  “Just try not to eat all of them at once, okay?  I don’t know where we’re going to be able to restock the cookie supply.”

“Ruby’s!”

“But we don’t know if she has cookies.”

“She better; she has to pay tribute to join our team!  Team Cookies!”

“That’s not our name.”

“It should be!”

They had been through so much.  Pyrrha was gone, but Jaune could almost imagine her, walking at Ren’s other side, hair like fire and smile like sunlight.  The sash around his waist felt heavier than a strip of fabric really should.  Gone but still with them.  Strange but perfectly normal. 

Jaune wished that his team and his family could have met under better circumstances.  He would have brought them home for a holiday or weekend, instead of because of death and destruction.  There would have been less stress, less strain.  Nora wouldn’t have constantly checked every doorway and window for danger.  Ren would have been present the whole time, instead of being… vacant, for the first few weeks.  They wouldn’t have been injured.  Pyrrha would have made friends with Marie and demonstrated Miló and Akoúo̱ for Camille and told Orianne all kinds of outlandish stories about grimm.  She would have asked Jacques questions about Hunting and watched in awe as Ren and Isabelle cooked for thirteen people, a skill she had never quite gotten the hang of.  It would have been incredible. 

It would never happen.  This was reality.  Pyrrha was dead.  Beacon was gone.  And yet, somehow Jaune still had Ren and Nora, right by his side despite everything that had happened, despite their whole lives before Beacon.  Whatever had been forming when they became JNPR had been deeply shaken by the Fall of Beacon, but it didn’t break.  Instead, it grew stronger. 

When the world ended, Jaune had gone home.  He had brought his remaining teammates with him because they had no home to go to.  Ren and Nora found a home with the Arcs, one that didn’t try to replace their memories or interfere with their bonds.  And Jaune – Jaune had come home, to his childhood house and his large loving family, but he had somehow gained _another_ home, with these two people who were suddenly so deeply important to him.  He was leaving home, but home was coming with him.  Again – strange, yet perfectly normal. 

The road to Patch was long, and the road beyond would be longer.  But they weren’t alone, and maybe that was the one thing that would make all the difference. 

Jaune pressed one hand to his scarlet sash, feeling the weight of an old circlet in his pack.  He met Ren’s eyes, no longer quite as worn and frightened, stronger now, confident, and squeezed Nora’s hand in his.  She squeezed back, and tugged him on. 

The world was waiting, and JNPR was ready for it. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ends _Coming Home, Finding Home._ Thank you to Loki for giving me a title when I was waffling, all those months and months ago. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this fic, whether you only just found it or have been suffering through my sporadic and distracted updates from the beginning. Your kudos and comments were motivation when I was staggering under the weight of the enormous idea I had set out upon (without even finishing an outline first!). I loved this whole adventure and although it was sometimes kinda rough writing, I think I’m gonna miss it a little bit. 
> 
> You can find me and my many disjointed fandom things on [tumblr](https://luoup.tumblr.com/).   
> (Mini-update: If you thought this was a cool and interesting fic, I talk about [some of the bits](https://luoup.tumblr.com/post/165943711788/coming-home-finding-home-behind-the-scenes) that didn't make it into the actual story on tumblr. Plus you can ask questions about this fic and others, or let me know what you thought! Thank you!)


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